Team RWBY and the Vault Rush
by HOWDOIVESTS
Summary: After the fall of Hyperion and the discovery of new vaults, vault hunters took Pandora by storm. Join a few teams of vault hunters and their daily struggles to strike it rich (Borderlands AU. Possible spoilers for Tales from the Borderlands and definite RWBY Volume 3 spoilers). (Inspired by the good folks in the RWBY subreddit discord chat, thanks for the encouragment!)
1. Meet the Team

Chapter 1: Meet the Team

A new dawn rose over Pandora. It had become much more quiet since the fall of Handsome Jack. No industrial, planet busting eridium drilling, no withering hail of loader bots, not even Hunter Helquist's radio station played anymore. Yes, things were looking up for Pandora, even the wildlife. Almost as if to demonstrate this, a skag, rising from its slumber, walked across the road….

And was promptly slammed against the bumper of a stolen bandit technical.

In the technical sat four young women who hardly looked like they were out of college. Of course, they all, save for one would have first had to actually have gone to college to use that description. They were most notably distinguished by the colors they wore. The youngest one, Ruby, wore red. Weiss, the one who was formally educated, wore white. Blake, the "broody moody" one, as they all called her, wore black. And Yang, Ruby's big sister and partner in crime, wore bright yellow.

Weiss woke with a start when the impact with the skag had rocked the technical. And Pandora, or at least that part of it, was quiet no longer.

"Yang, any more skags and this thing might be out of commission! None of us are made of money here, so watch it!", Weiss admonished drowsily, annoyed that the bump had ripped her from the sleep she got to enjoy so little of lately.

"Yes, mom", Yang shot back sarcastically. "Gimmie some slack, ice queen. At least I'm up enough to drive, or we would've had to sleep next to dead bandits. I know you think I'd be used to it at this point, and I probably am, but please I wanna get home as bad as you"

"Fair enough, I'm actually too… tired…. to be…. mad." Weiss replied before nodding off shortly after.

"Ugh, they're lucky that they're cute", Yang thought to herself, now alone on her drive back to home base. What was supposed to be a routine bounty turned out to be a nearly day long firefight with the Torchwick clan bandits. Thankfully Yang and her team was more than capable of fighting off the ambush without taking any injuries an insta-health wouldn't fix, but it still exhausted her teammates to the point that they fell asleep right as they clambered into the back of the technical, even the normally exuberant Ruby and the perpetually agitated Weiss had practically gone limp with exhaustion.

Just as Yang felt the last of her willpower start to give into the beckoning void of unconsciousness, she saw the bright sign of the town "Newer Haven". Jolting awake, she gunned the engine right into the open garage slot at the front of the town, not even bothering to reverse it before parking.

Stumbling drowsily out of the driver's seat, Yang weighed her options, she could either succumb to her body's demand for rest right here on the floor and wake up to a crick in her neck from sleeping on concrete and weird looks from her teammates. Struggle to shamble back to her bed, or go all the way and get everyone to a proper sleeping spot.

Deciding to play the part of a good Samaritan, she started with her dear little sister. She gingerly carried her over to the bedroll that Weiss made Ruby put next to her workbench when she got carried away tinkering and couldn't even bother to come to her actual bed. Yang tucked her in as best as she could tuck someone into a bedroll and affectionately ruffled her hair before turning back to the technical.

Weiss and Blake would be more challenging for her, however, as they had no sleeping arrangements in the workshop/garage like Ruby did, they always slept in the bedroom, "like normal people" as Weiss had said. She first picked up Weiss bridal style like she did Ruby, but her arms rebelled and refused to hold the pale ex-heiress up, forcing Yang to carry her over the shoulder like a sack of bricks, or a dead body. To be objective, Yang had dealt with worse, for one, she wasn't getting shot at, but at the moment it felt like the most arduous task she had ever and would ever undertake. "Why must the universe punish the good?" Yang jokingly thought to herself as she unceremoniously placed Weiss on her bed, not even having the energy to tuck her in like she did with Ruby.

Last was Blake, still sleeping as peacefully as someone could in the bed of a bandit technical. Yang's instincts told her Blake would be fine and the concrete was looking might comfy at the moment, but her conscious brain fought against such negligence, so she steeled herself and picked up Blake and walked her over to her bed like she did with Weiss.

Now satisfied that she had done her duty for the night, Yang shambled drowsily around for her bed in the darkness of the room before tripping, landing on something soft, and letting her weary mind and body be consumed by the void of sleep.


	2. The Next Morning

Chapter 2: The Next Morning

When Yang returned to the land of the living the next morning, or was it noon? She could never tell, not that it really mattered, she wished so desperately that she could stay where she was lying for a bit longer. It was so soft and warm, a far cry from the rickety beds or the ravaged couch that she usually fell into after a long night of fetching and bandit hunting.

Wait… that meant that this wasn't any of the beds or the couch, which meant….

She opened her eyes to the sight of Blake, who just started to open hers as well, leading Yang to the realization that she was on top of Blake. Okay, Yang had briefly entertained fantasies similar to this, but she was never serious about it, especially not with Blake. Not that she didn't want to, Yang thought Blake could use a cuddle given her rough upbringing, but Blake was just as likely to pull out some hidden sharp thing and stab Yang out of reflex as she was to scream out of surprise, getting abducted from your home to be raised as an assassin for Atlas kind of does that to you.

Thankfully Blake didn't stab her, but she did scream and pull out a knife.

"WAITWAITWAIT! BLAKE STOP IT'S ME! YANG!" Yang shouted out in haste while clumsily getting herself off of Blake and backing into the wall.

"…Yang? Oh. Uhhhh, sorry. That was just… reflex" Blake murmured sheepishly before sheathing the knife. "Just… reflex", she said again under her breath, more for herself than for Yang.

The air was tense for a moment. Yang knew Blake didn't want to be reminded of her past, but things like this, which no one had control over, still opened old wounds for the ex-assassin. The moment was short lived however, as a voice that would normally be shrill and grating if it weren't drowsily slurring half its words cut in.

"Yang Xiao Long what on Pandora is so important that you had to scream while I was sleeping AGAIN?!" Weiss inquired, now livid at the blonde lummox having interrupted her slumber twice within twenty four hours.

"Blake startled me, but it's fine now. She said it was just reflex", Yang replied evenly, hoping to defuse the situation

"Reflex? What do you…. oh." Weiss and Yang now both looked at Blake, who was deflated in shame, her eyes downcast. This wasn't the first time something like this had happened, and Blake predicted it would be far from the last.

"I didn't mean…." was all Blake could get out before Weiss and Yang sat on either side of her, arms around her and both of them shushing her

"We know you didn't. It's no big deal. Besides, you're gonna need more than that dinky thing if you wanna take me down! Yang replied, first tenderly as she was comforting Blake, then proudly as she boasted about her apparent durability

"What Yang said, you've more than shown that you want this to be behind you. There's no sense in faulting you for this." Weiss added, much more softly than she had been speaking before"

"Thanks, you two. I don't know where I would be without you." Blake replied, smiling softly.

"Oh pfff, it's nothing, that's what friends do-" Yang started her reply, and was promptly cut off by a red and black boot kicking open the door to the bedroom followed by its owner who dashed into the room.

"GOOOOOD MORNING TEAM RWBY!" Ruby yelled out loud enough to wake up the other three a little more. With her exuberant yell, the heavy feelings of the moment before were swiftly shot down and left in a ditch to rot, a similar fate to the one the bandits they confronted last night faced. "As leader of the team I have compiled a list of wonderful activities for us today!", she said cheerfully as she hefted a binder up and onto the table of the room with some text on the cover scratched out and replaced with a red, hastily scrawled "BEST DAY EVER".

"Is that my binder?" Weiss asked suspiciously

"Uhhh ye-no, no it's not" Ruby answered hastily.

"Okay, what's first on that list?" Weiss asked again, deciding not to bother calling out Ruby's disregard for private property.

"A visit to the gun show!" Ruby said excitedly, pointing to the scribbles next to the written number one on the inside of the binder

"Ohhh no, none of us are awake enough to drive, and besides. We got one right here", Yang replied as she flexed her arms ostentatiously. "Eh? Ehhhh?" she urged, hoping for a smile or a giggle. Instead all she got was a collective groan and Ruby, of all people, slapping a palm to her face in annoyance. "Ugh, everyone's a critic" Yang spat, pretending to be offended.

"I think she means the one just outside town", Blake chimed in helpfully, also diverting the topic from Yang's awful attempt at bragging about her muscles.

"Well what're waiting for let's go!" With that, Ruby tried to dash out of the room before Weiss yanked her back into the room by her cape.

"Not so fast, we still need a bite to eat, and I am _not_ going out looking like this" Weiss ranted. As if to illustrate her point, Blake's stomach growled like an overgrown stalker, and Ruby got a look at Weiss's normally prim and proper stark white hair in a frazzled mess.

"Uh, oh, yeah, uh… right! I'll be waiting in the workshop then." Ruby stammered sheepishly and dashed out of the room, leaving no evidence of her presence save for a few rose petals.

"How can you be so sure that you two are sisters?" Blake asked

"Easily" Yang replied nonchalantly, "Well, half-sisters, she takes after her mom a lot more if I were to guess".

END OF CHAPTER 2

A/N: All the teenaged characters of RWBY are in about their early 20's, because… **REASONS!** , and faunus exist here because I'm too lazy to think up the equivalent of that in the borderlands universe.


	3. Meet the Other Team

Chapter 3: Meet the Other Team

 _A few minutes later, at the gun show_

Metal clanged on metal, shots rang out, and incoherent screams about "poop trains" filled the air of the Pandoran bazaar. Strictly speaking, it was more of a market than a gun show, but given the nature of Pandora, most people were there for the guns. A certain unlikely duo, a young man and woman, stood at one of the shops. The young man was a tall, scraggly blonde with blue eyes equipped with little more than an armored hoodie and jeans. On his back was an old Jakobs rifle, almost completely unremarkable save for its refurbished condition and the mark of a family crest, signifying its status as a family heirloom. The young woman, only a bit shorter, had long bright red hair in a ponytail that logically should have worked against her in a fight. Her green eyes scrutinized the collection of wares on the table in front of her before yanking the blonde to look with her. "How does that look for you, Jaune?" The woman asked, pointing to the Pangolin brand turtle shield

"Actually really good, thanks Pyrrha." The blonde replied, examining the faded out instruction label of the shield"

"HEY! YOU GONNA PAY FOR THAT OR WHAT?!" a distant voice, probably the shopkeeper, yelled.

"STRIP THE WOUND! SALT THE FLESH! NYA HAHAHAHHAHAA" and a disturbingly wet _thud_ sound was the reply. The duo turned to the sound only to see a dead shopkeep and a masked psycho giving them a thumbs up.

"Oh. Uhhh, thanks? I guess" Jaune said to no one in particular, placing the shield on his belt and activating it. Offended by the lack of acknowledgment, the psycho then threw his buzzaxe at Jaune only for it to ricochet off his newly equipped shield. Undeterred by the setback, the psycho then rushed forward in an attempt to head-butt Jaune before receiving a bullet right between the eyes and crumpling onto the table, splattering blood onto Jaune's face

"Oh, I'm sorry" Pyrrha said, apologizing for getting blood on Jaune before putting her old Atlas rifle back in her pack. "Not to be rude, but you don't exactly look like you're here for a vault" Pyrrha remarked carefully.

"I am though, adventuring is a family tradition. Also I may sort of have student loans. Like, _a lot_ of student loans" Jaune replied, partially grateful at Pyrrha accompanying her on his journey and partially intimidated by her… well…. everything. Now there was no surprise as to why she was so famous. Even the cereal boxes back on Eden-6 featured her, but he hadn't made the connection until he actually met her, or when she met him, to be more accurate. After she saved him from a stare-down with a bullymong, Jaune jokingly asked if they could travel together. What he didn't expect was Pyrrha enthusiastically accepting the invitation. Here he was, practically a nobody, the family's black sheep on the galaxy's black sheep planet with nothing but the clothes on his back, his ECHO communicator and his family's rifle, (he hadn't even packed extra ammo!) and then Pyrrha, the famous (or infamous depending on who you ask) "Invincible Girl" decided he was a good enough partner to travel with. There was a catch to this, no way that he could have lucked out this hard. But for now, he would appreciate his good fortune until something comes up, whatever it will be, he's sure he and Pyrrha can handle it.

On another side of the marketplace, another duo, also a young man and woman stood. The man was the taller one with long black hair with a pink streak in a worn green shirt that had definitely come from off planet, and plain white pants. The woman was quite a bit shorter, as was her ginger hair. She wore what looked like cobbled together armor and a pink "combat skirt", as she called it. The woman was currently face to face with one of the shopkeepers with a too wide smile that could have either been from genuine happiness or sadistic glee while the young man watched behind her without expression.

"What, but-WE HAD A DEAL!" the panicky shopkeeper screamed

"Yes, _had_ a deal. It's so rude to hide things from your clients, naughty naughty. Speakin' of that deal, remember what I said when we were leaving?" She turned to the silent man behind and silently asked for his approval.

"Yes Nora, you can break his legs, but that's it" the man in green responded with a sigh

"Thanks, Ren!" was the last thing the shopkeeper heard before he felt the intense pain of a condition commonly known as "hammer to the knees".

"You know there are cleaner ways to do this, right Nora?" Ren asked, not really expecting a real answer.

"Yeah… but this is so much fun! Besides the bounty only said "alive", he's pretty alive! …Right? C'mon big guy, helloooooo? Yoo-hoo, anyone home?" Nora replied as she began to shake the shopkeeper, who had passed out from shock. "I'm sure he's fine, let's go!"

"Okay Nora" was all the response Ren was willing to give. Nora was great to have around, and they've been thick as thieves since, well, ever, but he wished that violence wasn't so fun for her. It made conversations with the town sheriffs a little awkward.

As both the duos planned to exit the market, they realized a major problem: they were both lost. With no clue on where the exit was, they eventually ran into each other, literally.

"Hey watch where you're going!" Jaune yelled without thinking. "Ooh! Ren! Can I? Can I?" shouted as she pulled out her hammer.

At the sight of the hammer, Jaune's attitude pulled a complete one eighty. "I uhh we, whoops! We didn't mean any trouble we swear! Please don't do what I think you're going to do I like my kneecaps"

"You heard him Nora" Ren insisted firmly, indirectly acknowledging Jaune's pleas for mercy

"Aww" Nora deflated

"We don't have any jobs right now, do you mind if we accompany you two?" Pyrrha asked, pulling the same thing Jaune did. The other duo seemed decent enough, even if the girl, Nora, she thinks she was called, was a tad bloodthirsty.

"Oooh! That's even better! We can be a team, like all the other super famous vault hunters were! Oh but we need a name, what are your names, you two?" Nora inquired exuberantly

"Jaune" "and Pyrrha" they replied, not in a mood to add anything else.

"Hmm, let me think. Jaune, Nora, Pyrrha, Ren. J, N, P, R, JNPR. We can be team Juniper!" Nora announced, as if announcing the opening of a vault.

"Team JNPR, that actually sounds nice, we're in" Pyrrha answered back, smiling warmly.

"So do you two know how to get out of this market brawl whatever-this-thing-is?" Jaune asked, looking around fearfully

"Uhhh, no actually. We're lost too" came Ren's terse reply.

"Well we can at least stick together" Pyrrha decided for the newly formed team JNPR.

They would wander the market for a little bit longer before running into another group of people, and again, they literally ran into each other.

END OF CHAPTER 3


	4. Gathering Arms

Chapter 4: Gathering Arms

 _The workshop, before team RWBY visited the market_

Yang walked into the garage (or "workshop", as Ruby called it) to see Ruby at her workbench and changed into her "work clothes", which consisted of a tank top and the bottom half of an engineer jumpsuit, which exposed the strange alien tattoos she was born with that her normal attire hid. Their parents told them of stories about people with these tattoos. Sirens, they were called. Women who held such great power that one could consider it magic. Ruby had no signs of having such power, but the tattoos still put a big target on her back, forcing her and Yang to leave their home planet, and their parents. Well, parent in this case. Neither of their mothers had stayed for long.

As bad as that sounded, Ruby and Yang were mostly fine with it. Sure they missed their friends at school, and they didn't get to hug their dad anymore, but every cloud has its silver lining. For one thing, Ruby and Yang seemed to have been born to be adventurers, from Ruby's "unhealthy" (according to Weiss) obsession with tinkering with (and using) weaponry and Yang's wanderlust, vault hunting was right up their alley. Plus, the ECHO net was widespread enough that they got to call their father Taiyang even all the way on Pandora to tell them of their latest exploits. Taiyang, being a retired mercenary himself, knew his daughters were probably up to more unsavory things, but that wasn't as important to him as their safety and wellbeing. Even so, it wouldn't have been fair to take exception to such actions; he had taken his fair share of questionable contracts in his day.

While Yang was reminiscing on her and her sister's curious situation, she caught sight of what laid on Ruby's workbench. Crescent Rose, a black and red "Old Hyperion" sniper rifle, made before the rise of Handsome Jack and his obsession with what Weiss and Blake called "tawdry yellow" and "a crime against visual design" respectively. It was Ruby's pride and joy, her main weapon ever since she and Yang found it in a long dead bandit lord's armory. At this point, it had just as much of Ruby's personal touch as it did Hyperion's top notch craftsmanship. The factory standard receiver had been rechambered for what Ruby called "reaper shot", bullets that Ruby painstakingly hand loaded for power and precision. The barrel had been switched out for an aftermarket match grade barrel that Ruby had then further improved. She even splurged a little and got her rose symbol laser etched onto the receiver. Of course, Ruby being Ruby, she couldn't bear to stop there. No, she had somehow attached a collapsible blade and handle to make the already impressive vintage rifle capable of transforming into a sniper scythe.

Speaking of that armory, Yang hadn't left that little treasure trove empty handed either. She pulled out her own signature weapons to admire them for a little. Sure she had them on her all the time, but that didn't make them any less impressive to her than the day she first found them. They were a pair of Torgue brand shotguns sawn off to the point that they qualified more as pistols than as shotguns, perfect for Yang's love of close combat. The stark gunmetal and red had been painted over with a bright yellow, and their factory designations of "Bangsticks" had been replaced by the nickname Ember Celica. As nice as they were, Yang still preferred punching her way through her problems and loathed giving that up to actually shoot her new guns, until she had a stroke of genius. Why not both? And so Ember Celica became the first explosive shot-gauntlets, fitting on mounts Yang had on her wrists with remote triggers that let her shoot _and_ punch her way through fights now. Engineering genius to Yang, safety hazards to everyone else.

Finished patting herself on the back for her self-proclaimed genius solution, Yang looked to Crescent Rose and remarked, "It's probably fine sis, none of the bandits were able to get up close to you last night"

"I know, but fine isn't good enough. Plus my sweetheart deserves all the care it can get" Ruby answered defensively, cradling the rifle like a baby.

"Uh… ignoring that. I brought breakfast, you want some stalkos?" Yang asked, presenting a paper plate of tortillas filled with an unknown sauce and what she hoped was stalker meat, hence the name.

"Oh, sure, Weiss won't let me hear the end of it if she hears my stomach growl" Ruby replied, leaving Crescent Rose on the workbench and walking over to grab one of the peculiar things. It didn't taste _bad_ per se, but it sure tasted off, not that it mattered. Picky eaters didn't last long on Pandora, especially not when about half of the wildlife was inedible due to either not even being made of organic material, or just being poisonous.

Having scarfed down enough stalkos to get her stomach to shut up, Ruby walked into a side room to change into her normal outfit, which hid her tattoos. Weiss and Blake had seen them already, and realistically they could probably take on anyone who was brave enough (or dumb enough) to try anything on Ruby, but it was still simpler to keep them hidden. Getting heckled with questions Ruby had no answer for always put a damper on her mood.

Meanwhile Weiss and Blake were busy making themselves look like they hadn't just risen from their graves. They both knew they were the only ones that cared about their appearance, but that was reason enough for the both of them. Having mostly finished with straightening herself up, Weiss idly examined her weapon, Myrtenaster.

As much of a work of art as it was a weapon, Myrtenaster was one of the few things Weiss bought for herself with the massive allowance she had as the daughter of an Atlas board member before its destruction at the hands of Pandora. She missed the money, but she sure didn't miss Atlas, or her father. In fact, Myrtenaster was practically the only thing she could possibly need money for now, she had long since given up the heiress lifestyle when, in a move similar to her big sister Winter, she disowned herself from the family name, taking her personal savings and a ship to no place in particular, so long as it was away from her father. She took another look at Myrtenaster. Years of use still hadn't eroded the luster it seemed to give off. It was a revolver custom ordered from Maliwan equipped with a variable element cylinder allowing Weiss to cycle between elemental shots on the fly. Using a little of the weapon knowledge she picked up from eavesdropping in the R&D wing of the facility she often had to visit, she had even cooperated with the weapon's lead designer to incorporate a cryo shot chamber that was still usable on Pandora's notably methane bare environment. Seeking to have her hobby of fencing be put to use, Weiss also commissioned an attachable rapier blade and modified the pistol grip to straighten into a hilt when needed.

Last was Blake, sipping at her seemingly inexhaustible tea rations, and performing some quick maintenance on her weapon, Gambol Shroud.

Gambol Shroud had always been Blake's weapon, her eternal companion in her unsavory past occupation and her current protector of not just herself, but now her teammates. Much like the rest of her teammates had done to their weapons, she had extensively modified it. What was once an unremarkable, if high quality, Atlas pistol had become a sword and chain scythe. A collapsible blade sat attached to the top of the pistol and an especially durable ribbon had been tied to the pistol's grip, allowing Blake a myriad of alternate uses for the seemingly plain pistol sword. Even the edge of its sheath was sharpened and usable as a cleaver, a handy surprise for unsuspecting bandits who got too close for comfort. Quiet and efficient, much like its wielder.

After each team member had prepared enough for the day to satisfy themselves, they gathered in front of the town workshop to catch sight of a variety of booths and tables outside the town. The gun show, the first thing on Ruby's list stood in the distance like a city on a hill. If Ruby were honest, no gun in the galaxy could possibly take the place of her beloved Crescent Rose, but she loved seeing new weapons regardless. They also needed some basic supplies, and cookies. Ruby hoped that this market would have cookies. A small wish, but one she never forgot about.

Not two minutes after entering the market, the team realized they had no idea how to navigate the sprawl of shops, unconsciously picking up their pace until they ran into another group of four consisting of a blonde, two redheads, and a pink streaked brunette.

END OF CHAPTER 4

A/N: Yes, I went a lot into describing the weapons, but that's what both these universes have lots of; weapon porn. Most weapons of characters mainly from RWBY will be guns first and melee weapons second. Also for those asking why Ruby is a siren (BIG V3 FINALE SPOILERS), Ruby has a legendary power in canon and I made her a siren here to mirror that, but her powers here have not manifested, similar to canon (until the finale), so she's not going to be the overpowered one for the journey.


	5. The Teams Meet

Chapter 5: The Teams Meet

There are many ways to meet people on Pandora. Physically bumping into them usually leaves a bad first impression, just as it was doing right now. Everyone had pulled out their weapons in the panic and their fingers were a twitch away from turning the already chaotic bazaar into an actual gunfight before the diplomatic sides of each of them took hold and holstered their weapons.

"Uhhh, ah heh heh, sorry about that. Guess we're all a little jumpy" the scraggly blonde stammered, still a bit shaken from what he was sure to be a near death experience.

"Ehh it's nobody's fault. Can't be too careful in a place like this" Yang replied, acting casual about the fact that they may have blown up one of the few good marketplaces near town.

"She's not wrong" the man in green added. "Let's try that again, though. Hi, you four. What are your names?"

Before any of her teammates could respond, Ruby picked up almost as soon as Ren finished asking his question, first pointing to herself with a proud "I'm Ruby", then pointing to each team member and saying their respective names.

"Oh, those are nice names" the taller redhead chimed in happily. "My name is Pyrrha"

"I'm Jaune" stated the blonde, with a little showy flair to it

"Ren", the man in green stated plainly

"And Nora!" Nora yelled out exuberantly

"Well it was nice to meet you four, but ahhh. Do you know the way around here? We're kind of… ok we're really lost" Ruby admitted, twiddling her thumbs like a child caught sneaking out at night.

"That would make… eight of us" Jaune answered. "We can wander and be lost together as two teams, I guess"

"Hm. That sounds fine" Ruby agreed.

Both teams were now moseying around the shop stalls, pocketing supplies such as food, spare parts, tools, and some rare luxuries, like cookies, tea, and pancake mix, much to the delight of Ruby, Blake, and Nora. They paid for their purchases either with their bounty money or not at all if the shopkeeper either wasn't looking, or couldn't look due to the troublesome affliction known as "death by buzzaxe".

"So just out of curiosity, what are your deals for being here, besides the obvious super cool alien loot? This isn't exactly a resort planet" Ruby asked, seeking to learn more about their new found acquaintances.

"How about we tell you our deals and you tell us ours? Even if you don't, mine is only four words anyway. Tradition and student loans"

This drew a perplexed eyebrow from everyone but Pyrrha, but no one bothered to further investigate it. Besides, next up were the silent brunette and the notably less silent ginger.

"Oh Renny and I just love travelling! We've been lots of places! Elpis, the Edens, Athenis, Prometheus. You gotta travel a lot when you have no parents but it grows on you!" Nora listed out energetically, even the "no parents" part

"Oh… that's… rough" Yang managed to reply, trying to give her sympathy

"Aw we're fiiiiiiiine, we got to see _so many_ cool places and fight so much and aaaagh I love it! Right, Ren?"

"You'd be right, Nora" was the most Ren was willing to reply to that, but one could notice a small, but nonetheless pleased smile on his face.

All eyes turned to Pyrrha in curiosity. "Oh, me? I just sort of… wound up here after Atlas fell. All that fame didn't really mean anything when it was tied to a corporation, but I still had my skills. So why not come to a place where they could be put to use?" Pyrrha managed to say both eloquently and awkwardly, specifically when she saw Jaune paying significantly more attention than he usually looked like he did.

"Alright, we told us our deals, your turn, you lovely ladies!" Nora announced.

"Well Yang and I don't look like it, but we're sisters. Some…. circumstances came up at home which made it too dangerous for me to stay" Ruby replied, first in her usual cheery manner, but then in a more morose way when she mentioned having to leave home

"And I'd rather lose my arm then let my baby sister have to run from home on her own!" Yang added in proudly, giving Ruby a noogie to emphasize her point.

"Honestly I did it to get away. I hadn't planned on staying here, but a vault is sort of a hard opportunity to let slip" Weiss stated, ignoring the sister fight that was starting to happen right next to her. Whatever they did, they had better not get dirt in her hair or so help her Ruby and Yang's knees will wish she had just shot them.  
"I'd prefer not to talk too much about it. Let's just say I don't really have anywhere else" Blake said, ending the little two way interview on a somewhat somber note.

"Well regardless, it was nice to meet you four" Pyrrha replied, extending a gloved hand to shake. The remaining seven all followed suit, shaking each other's hands in a display of mutual respect before finally finding the path out of the market before realizing team JNPR, as they called themselves, didn't really have a place to stay since they had planned on wandering.

"That won't do, how long have you four been out? We should do more together, you all seem pretty great" Yang urged as they all walked into the town of Newer Haven.

"Oh, why that sounds grand, but we won't be a burden, will we? " Pyrrha asked. It's not that she didn't appreciate the offer, quite the opposite, in fact. As used to travelling as she was, she could always use a little time off her feet to recharge, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she was taking advantage of the four she just met.

"Nahh don't worry about it. Besides, we're dropping off our stuff first, and you guys too if you don't have anywhere else" Yang replied casually, thinking nothing major of Pyrrha's concern as they approached the workshop and unlocked it with one of her keys.

"Here's the workshop garage thing we got. Any gear and spare parts you put here, neatly, please, and anything that doesn't fall under that can go in the apartment when we get there. Also neatly" Weiss instructed didactically.

"Alright, we'll be unpacking our gear here for now" Jaune said back, already shedding his pack and placing his rifle on one of the spare spots on the gun rack.

With that implicit suggestion, Pyrrha drew out her weapon to store on the gun rack. Milo, an Atlas made semi auto rifle painted red and gold with a collapsible bayonet long enough that she could use it as a sword and a spear as much as she could use it to actually shoot people. She also put up her bronze, circular shield Akouo; an Atlas made "Aspis", the standard model of shield for (former) elite Atlas troops like herself, as useful as a projectile as it was a shield.

Next was Nora's weapon, a monstrosity she either called "Maghnild" or her "loose cannon associate" depending on if she was talking to a normal person or a contractor that tried to stiff her or Ren out of some hard earned bounty. It consisted of a Torgue made "Carnage" model rocket shotgun that Nora had removed the rocket fuel primer from, turning the already destructive rocket shotgun into an even more explosive and unpredictable grenade shotgun painted silver and pink. Torgue made their guns to last, and Nora knew it as she decided to install a telescoping handle to further transform it into a makeshift grenade warhammer. How Ren decided he could trust her with such a weapon is one of Pandora's mysteries to this day, and possibly for generations to come.

Last were Ren's weapons, Stormflower. A modest pair of Vladof brand machine pistols with curved blades pointing down acting both as handguards, and as good old fashioned sharp objects for when the time called.

Having put away his gear, Ren grabbed the still unconscious shopkeeper he and Nora brought, surprisingly without questioning from anyone else, and announced he was going to turn in the bounty, carrying the shopkeeper, who was apparently troublesome enough to have a bounty, to the town square's bounty board, wherever that was.

Meanwhile in team RWBY's apartment, a clamor rose as all the team members hurried about the cramped living space. Just in case the new team they had met needed a place to crash, Ruby declared that the apartment must be cleaned. Ruby and Yang had the brunt of the workload compared to Weiss, the team neat freak, who had always put her belongings in some compartment or her footlocker, and Blake, who had practically nothing save for her gear, her precious tea, and her books. In the case of her books, they never left her personal shelf for long, which she rifled through without looking only to find empty space where a certain special book usually resided.

Panic threatened to shatter Blake's composed visage. Of all the books she had, the missing one was the one she would _never_ willingly share with the other three young women in the room, but not because she feared ridicule. No, they would understand. Everyone has their vices, but her image among them would be irrevocably destroyed if any of them picked up on the fact that the resident ex-Atlas assassin's main hobby besides vigilante justice (the only kind of justice on a place like Pandora) was reading _those_ kinds of books. Despite her alarm, however, expressing it would lead to Ruby or Yang eventually finding out the cause thanks to her ineptitude at lying and their surprising capability of reading emotions, probably from reading each other's emotions growing up together. All this and the fact that she had a lapse in vigilance bad enough that she lost the one book she had sworn to herself to never lose track of had her kicking and screaming internally. Alas, she had to swallow her alarm for the time being, even if it was her most tragic loss.

Her lament was short lived, but was replaced by more reflexive panic when Yang was picking up her extra shirts she left scattered on the floor and unknowingly picked up Blake's book. Now it resided bundled in Yang's duffle bag. She would rather have not lost it, but she could easily talk to Yang about it.

A few minutes later the apartment had a little more room, just enough to fit eight people if needed. Barely. Dusting herself off, Ruby assumed her place at the head of the coffee table in the center of the room and cleared her throat, beginning an impromptu team meeting.

"Alright, everyone. We have four new possible friends and they're currently waiting in our workshop. I am putting our decision on what to do with them to a vote!" Ruby announced proudly.

"I vote we drink with them" Yang almost immediately offered.

"We can do one of our fetch quests with them" Blake added

"I… actually could unwind. That ambush from the Torchwick bandits still has me all haggard" Weiss finally replied.

"Sooooo final vote then, party with the new guys?" Ruby asked, raising her hand.

Weiss and Yang raised their hands too, with Blake giving no reaction other than a shrug and a raised hand as well.

"Sooo it's settled then! Quickly, to the workshop!" Ruby shouted out, leaving behind her teammates in a swirl of rose petals as she dashed out the door.

And so began team RWBY and the first step to their perfectly logical protocol for meeting new friends.

Going out and getting sloshed with them.

END OF CHAPTER 5

A/N: So all you folks from the discord reading finally get to see some of the drunk rwby we talked about. I'll get them on the journey of vault hunting and shoot looting soon, I swear. But I still feel like I need to establish the setting and characters a bit more. Also this is my last "reserve" chapter. So it may be a bit before another one comes up relative to the wait for the others.


	6. Getting a Clue

Chapter 6: Getting a Clue

Yang's entire body reeled with pain. None of her senses responded. Internally panicking at the uncertainty of her situation, Yang forced her eyes open through her inexplicable lethargy. What greeted her both relieved her and grievously wounded her.

What relived her was the familiar sight of the walls of her team's shared apartment. Her duffle bag, the familiar part of the wall she stared at when she had trouble sleeping (which meant she hadn't fallen asleep on Blake again, thank god), and the foot of her bed, assuring Yang that whatever happened probably just involved having too much fun. What grievously wounded her, however, was actually seeing all of it. It was bright, too bright. Her eyes felt like they were being pierced in the brief moment she had them open before she snapped them shut and tried to sleep off her unknown affliction. It only took a few minutes for her to conclude that the hammers banging against the inside of her skull would not allow her to sink into her dreams as she so desperately wished to, leading her to groan into the ragged pillow at her predicament.

"Having fun?" A familiar voice rung in Yang's ears, which she would have welcomed if it weren't for the fact that it seemed horrifically loud and made the ache in Yang's head even worse, something she didn't think was possible.

"Oh yeah… having a… blast… everything… hurts… even talking" Yang managed to eke out painfully, her face still buried in the pillow in a futile attempt to alleviate her splitting headache.

"Here, drink this. Ren said it would help" Blake instructed, handing Yang a glass of strange bubbly green liquid that gurgled as if alive, or brought back from the dead.

Without even questioning the contents, Yang downed it in one gulp. So what if she just chugged some unknown green liquid that looked like zombie juice? She was willing to do a lot worse to make her head stop feeling like it was getting danced on by loader bots.

Blake remained silent after Yang snatched the glass out of her hand and greedily drank from it, waiting for it to kick in. After a few moments, Yang opened her eyes, which had dark circles of exhaustion under them and sat up; revealing her wild mane of golden hair to be an even more jumbled and chaotic mess than she usually liked it to be.

"Wow, this really helped. Like _a lot_. I thought I was gonna have to spend today lying in bed and moanin-hrrrk!" Yang finally said, looking significantly better, but turning green soon afterward as she rushed out of the apartment. Blake followed suit, sighing at the dire condition the blonde brawler was enduring.

When she finally made it to the little space in front of the apartment, she was greeted with the sight of Yang retching into a trash can, probably cursing fate for her affliction. Again, Blake said nothing; simply waiting for Yang to finish throwing up into the trash can with a handkerchief ready.

When Yang's body finally decided it purged a satisfactory amount of whatever was in her stomach, she gladly took the handkerchief Blake gave her and wiped her mouth before tossing it in the trash can as well, its usefulness forever compromised.

"Ughhh I take it back I don't feel better" Yang moaned, clutching her stomach.

"It doesn't hurt to talk and see, does it? I can help you back to bed" Blake replied with open concern.

"No, no I can talk, it's just my stomach now" Yang said back, fumbling around for her canteen, finding it and drinking from it as if she just suffered a trek through the desert. After she finished off the canteen, she pocketed it and started to head back into the apartment, gesturing for Blake to follow her.

After getting settled at the coffee table and seeing the new four she met yesterday, team JNPR she thinks they called themselves, out cold on the floor, Blake sat down across from her, taking a sip of her tea before putting it aside and looking directly at Yang.

"Do you remember anything from last night?" Blake asked.

"Uhhh, hold on, my head still hurts a bit" Yang answered, mentally scrounging for bits and pieces of the previous day. "I remember starting the vote to go party with the new guys. Walking with them to the bar, and… that's it" Yang added.

"Oh you partied alright, I think I should start from the beginning though…."

 _One night earlier, at "The Crow Bar"_

The town of Newer Haven was in a panic. Townspeople cowered in their homes, the streets cleared, and the air grew thick with tension. For the worst thing that could possibly happen was happening. Eight young vault hunters were having a night out.

The bar reeked of dirt, cheap spilled alcohol, and a little blood, but the town had no other forms of entertainment for its residents, so it still had a healthy number of guests. A black haired giant of a man with a goatee clad in a dress shirt and vest stood behind the bar, adjusting his tie with a confident smile on his face before Yang and the seven other vault hunters entered through the front door. The man, named Junior, scowled at this, leaving his spot at the bar to approach Yang.

"Goddammit, blondie, I _just_ cleaned up everything from the last incident, I swear if you-"Junior tried to say, but was swiftly cut off by the realization of his error in approaching Yang and putting his face in punching range. His face fell from agitated to silently begging for mercy after his epiphany.

"Oh calm down, We're just here for drinks, that's all. I swear if anything happens to your bar tonight it won't be our fault" Yang promised with a wink.

"Uh-huh, suuuure" Junior answered sarcastically, still not trusting that his bar would survive, but unable to do anything to prevent what he thought was its inevitable second destruction.

The night started harmlessly enough, a few rounds of drinks, some more getting to know each other, which revealed Weiss had an older sister named Winter who left the corporate world for the military, and Ruby and Yang had a supposedly "super cool" uncle named Qrow.

Alcohol and youth do not mix well for anyone nearby, however, as more rounds passed, the troublemakers of the team became more rambunctious. Not even one hour into the night and chaos ruled the bar, Nora and Yang flinging themselves at each other and at the walls of the bar for no discernable reason, Weiss becoming especially affectionate, chasing an inebriated Ruby who, even in her intoxicated state, knew something had to be off if Weiss was asking for a hug. Jaune was locked in a drinking contest with a burly man in green who was accompanied by two young women, one with floppy rabbit ears, and another with a beret and shades that for some odd reason remained equipped even inside the bar, and Pyrrha cheered him on from the side.

In the midst of the pandemonium stood Blake and Ren, still at the original table paying no mind to the ruckus that surrounded them. Both had their ECHO communicators set on "Record" and were saving it all.

"Blackmail?" Ren asked, more out of curiosity than to disapprove. After all, he was guilty as well

"Who wouldn't pass this up? " Blake answered with a rare mischievous smile.

"Whatever we get, let's hope the only use we'll have is to laugh at it" Ren agreed.

Eventually the energy of everyone died down enough for Blake and Ren, the only ones who didn't drink, to walk their wobbly teammates back to the apartment.

 _Present Day_

"So to be concise, you have a textbook case of hangover" Blake finished her story, leaning back in her chair and offering Yang a bottle of water.

"Oh. Uh, thanks, for helping me. How long did I last?" Yang inquired.

"Not that long, you were the first of us to be all the way drunk" Blake answered

"What?! No way I-"

Blake cut her off by playing the recording she had of the night before, playing the part where Yang's speech started to get notably more slurred than all the other voices.

"I stand corrected" Yang backpedaled. "I'm still feeling really crappy, so I'm gonna be in my bed, but if you need help with any of their hangovers just yell. Actually don't, sound is awful for a hangover" Yang said, stumbling up to her bed before falling over into it and almost immediately falling asleep.

No one else got up in the short while that Yang took to go back to her bed besides Ren, who was already up and knew well enough to mind his own business. Perfect, this was Blake's opportunity; she silently crept up to Yang's duffle bag and began rifling through it before finding her prize. "Ninjas of Love", the cover read, Blake's favorite book ever since she lifted it off of that one Atlas general, now lay in the hands of its rightful owner.

The ex-assassin's thoughts drifted back to Yang. As much as the brawler's antics should have irritated her, Blake couldn't help but stick around. Yang even made her laugh sometimes, and she can't even remember the last time she laughed, if she ever had, before meeting Yang. Blake still remembered when she first escaped Atlas and resigned herself to a life of running and solitude. Not exactly a good life, but anything was better than killing for Atlas. She couldn't stand what she saw, what she had to do, what they tried to make her into. She wanted to be rid of that, to run away. Of course, Blake didn't plan on running into Ruby and Yang. At first, she tried to part ways with them because their exuberance got on her nerves, but necessity demanded they stick together. Blake had no quick way around Pandora yet and she was starting to run out of ammo. She was good with a sword, sure, but not _that_ good, forcing her to travel with the sisters. Over time, their bright personalities grew on her, she felt genuine concern when Ruby came down with a fever from waiting at her sniping spot to clear out the bandits guarding an ammo cache, and she even caught herself smiling when Ruby and Yang found chocolate chip cookies. In the back of her head a voice told her this wouldn't last, however. It told her she would not have companionship for long, or ever again. Her mind always went back to that spot in idle times, but she fought against it every time. Besides, why would she ever let herself lose Yang? She was so carefree, so sweet, and she also had those amazing abs and Blake would do anything just to feel Yang's…

" _No. Bad Blake. Bad"_ she chided herself for having such thoughts. Pandora must have gotten to her; the last thing anyone needed to know was Blake's more… superficial opinions of Yang. No, that would be something that would stay in her books. Thankfully the remaining people in the apartment awoke, allowing Blake to distract herself from her thoughts by helping Ren make sure no one on their team was too hung over.

After a little while of team JNPR slogging through the morning sickness, they announced their departure, making for the garage to pick up their gear and head off, but not before leaving contact information for a future date.

Almost immediately after the team left, Weiss's ECHO communicator rang to life with a simple message that said "Come to the town square and knock on the really tall building door" sent by a nondescript "WS"

"Is that a trap?" Blake asked immediately.

"Probably not, look it has the little WS at the bottom- wait. Weiss are you lonely? You know Ruby would be fine with keeping you company more often" Yang suggested not so subtly, lightly elbowing Weiss.

"I am perfectly fine, thank you very much! Also, we can trust this message. I know who it is, but there's no sense in telling you now, considering we'll meet them" Weiss answered.

"Alright, let's go then! Always nice to meet the townsfolk!" Ruby exclaimed, again dashing off and leaving her team in the dust.

After the rest of her team caught up with her, Ruby knocked on the door before the intercom next to it gurgled to life. "Who is this?" the intercom asked, carrying a woman's harsh voice.

"Weiss Schnee, I got a message from a "WS" saying to come here" Weiss answered haughtily, as if she owned the massive building that overlooked the town"

Without a response, the door opened to reveal a tall woman with white hair gathered into a bun, save for a curled lock on the left side of her face and bangs hiding the right side. She was clad in a ragged white military uniform, which would have once looked regal if it weren't for the grimy wear and tear that Pandora seemed to curse every piece of clothing with.

"Winter!" Weiss shouted happily, rushing forward to hug the woman without delay.

Winter, unsurprised by this, readied herself to receive her younger sister in her arms.

"It's good to see you too, Weiss" Winter replied, returning the embrace before looking at the other three vault hunters at the doorstep.

"My sister says you're all looking for a vault. If that's true, I may have some useful things for you"

"HEY ICE QUEEN. THE HELL YOU TALKING TO MY NEICES ABOUT?!" a slurred, clearly inebriated voice called out from the distance.

Winter's face almost instantly fell from a smile to a scowl as her hand floated over the sheath on her hip, waiting for the voice to show itself.

"Hey don't get mad, I was just asking a question" the voice added, revealing its owner to be a thin man with spiky, greying hair, a grey dress shirt, and a tattered red cape.

"Uncle Qrow?!" Ruby and Yang both yelled in surprise.

"Uncle Qrow" Qrow answered back before turning to Winter. "Really, I'm just asking a question, what're you doing with my nieces?"

END OF CHAPTER 6

A/N: I'll get more Weiss screentime in here I swear. Also hope you liked the little CFVY cameo, they're in here too!


	7. A New Day, Full of Opportunity

Chapter 7: A New Day, Full of Opportunity

After another fight between Qrow and Winter (and another crater in the town square), a meeting with the leaders of the town named Ozpin and Ironwood, and a briefing on a lead to the first part of finding one of the vaults left on Pandora, team RWBY set off on the stolen technical into the morning sun, on the hunt for loot and adventure, Yang once again in the driver's seat and Weiss riding shotgun with a map on her ECHO device, acting as co-pilot for Yang.

"The coordinates Winter gave us are close now, just a few more miles and…." Weiss looked up and trailed off at the sight of a colossus of ramshackle walls, emplaced guns, and currently deactivated spotlights before looking to see that it matched the coordinates she received, and sighed. "Oh yay, bandits" Weiss deadpanned in obvious annoyance.

A few minutes later and the technical could not go any further without possibly entering the range of the guards on the walls, forcing Yang to park it behind a rock a fair distance away. In the shade of the rock, Ruby began drawing in the sand with a stick left in the bed of the technical, making a rough sketch of the mysterious fortress and the positions of the guards, as well as an "R", a "W", a "B", and a "Y" representing herself and her teammates.

"Alright, so I can take the guards at the front from here, but I'll need to circle around the fort to take out any other guards on the top of the wall, they'll notice and keep sending up more guards and they might send scouts out into the field too. Yang, you distract them while Blake and Weiss look for a way in, we all meet back behind this rock here and break in through the path Blake and Weiss find." Ruby listed out, surprisingly focused and scribbling out arrows to map out the plan. "Sound good?" she asked.

"Sounds great!" Yang shouted out, mounting Ember Celica onto her wrists, raring for the rush that only some explosive close up action could give her. Weiss and Blake nodded at Ruby, equipping their weapons in "gun" form, signaling that they were ready to move out.

"Alright, on a count of three. One…. Two... Three!" Ruby announced, immediately rushing inhumanly quickly between the rocks in front of the fortress, hiding behind one where she could pick off the bandits at a range their cobbled together guns couldn't hope to hit her, and gave a thumbs up to signal Blake and Weiss to move out. Weiss threw out a digistructed "glyph", propelling herself one way, and Blake seemed to stand still until her image faded away into a digitized cloud and Ruby saw her moving the other way out of the corner of her eye. Yang, no longer forced to bottle up her excitement, fired off a few shots, which even in the great distance she stood from the fortress to avoid getting shot into the ground, turned a few heads.

Or at least, Yang would have turned a few heads if Ruby hadn't put a bullet through each of them in rapid succession. Seeing the spontaneous deaths of his underlings, a heavy coated nomad sounded an alarm, and soon a horde of psychos poured out of the side of the fortress that Ruby attacked, not too different from the way an anthill pours out ants when kicked.

Yang, now executing her part of the plan, charged into the horde with a battle cry and her shotguns at the ready. As numerous as the psychos were, they still struggled in getting a hit on Yang. Her experience in hand to hand combat, from conventional training, but mostly through street brawls, combined with Ember Celica, made her a destructive whirl of fists and explosions, cutting a charred, bloody swath through the ranks of insanity addled axe wielders, ideally to convince the bandits to send more troops and leave the fort more vulnerable.

"C'mon, is that all you got?! I'm not even warmed… up…. yet…" Yang boasted, but then trailed off as she saw the little cowlick that stuck up on the top of her head flutter down in front of her like the feathers of a fallen angel. At the sight of her beloved hair damaged at the hands of the psychos, what was once a whirl became a cataclysmic rampage. Yang eschewed the few kicks she was using in favor of using her fists and Ember Celica entirely, crushing her way through the horde at an even more alarming rate. However, in her fury, she didn't notice one of the emplaced Gatling guns revving up and taking aim. Only when the gun began to indiscriminately rain bullets on the area did Yang start dodging and zig zagging, hoping the only damage would be to her shield.

Thankfully the gun didn't last for long. The withering barrage of gunfire stopped as suddenly as it began, punctuated by the sharp _crack_ of Crescent Rose firing, leaving the gunner bereft of a large portion of his grey matter. Another _crack_ left the gun itself without a usable set of barrels. "Got your back!" Ruby chirped through the ECHO communicator. "Good thing you did" Yang answered back, her rage induced haze clearing at the sound of Ruby's voice. "Oh? More small fries for the champ, huh? Don't mind if I do…" Yang said mostly to herself, having caught sight of a second wave of challengers, which now included the "normal", gun toting bandits. Reloading Ember Celica, she charged forward once again in an effort to draw as much attention as she could and beat down as many bandits as she could.

Meanwhile Weiss and Blake skirted the sides of the fortress, searching for a weak point, a side door, anything that might serve as an entry point. Eventually they met on the opposite end of the fort, unable to find any possible entry point at the distance they stayed to avoid the range of the Gatling guns. "We searched as closely as we could with the guns still up, it looks like the only way through is the front door. Ruby, if you can move to the sides to take out the guns we can take a closer look, but if you can't, the front door is our only option" Weiss announced through her ECHO device.

"Yeah, about that…" Ruby replied. "There's too many coming out from the front to leave Yang alone, come in from the flanks and we'll works from there" Ruby requested in between picking off especially threatening foes, such as the shielded nomads and "badass" bandits.

"WOO HOO! I FEEL ALIVE!" was Yang's response, having forgotten to turn off her ECHO device and unaware of the conversation in the midst of all the chaos.

"She sounds like she's having fun" Blake commented.

"A little _too_ much fun, but what can you do?" Weiss replied.

When Weiss and Blake returned to the front of the fort, they saw Yang brawling against a veritable swarm of bandits, psychos, and nomads alike, punching, shooting, and smashing apart the opposition. They could clearly see that the bandits were gaining ground however, as Yang could only fight off so many at a time before more took their place.

With little more than a nod to each other, Weiss and Blake sprang into action, Blake rushing into the hoard to bait them away from Yang, and Weiss cycling through the digistructed glyphs at her disposal before confirming her selection, which she projected on the area she predicted Blake would lead the bandits to. Not a few moments later, Blake came running back, a section of the horde hot on her tail, before seemingly standing still. The bandits shot and hacked at "Blake" before again, she faded away, revealing her to be standing just outside the glowing circle Weiss projected, which trapped the bandits in light constructs that forced their feet to the ground, unable to even pick them up. Smirking in self-satisfaction, Weiss then moved her hand to make the glyph implode, throwing the bandits even closer together. Blake, seeing the implosion, followed it up with a slag grenade, gathering the bandits together to be afflicted by the purple stuff before a black blur seemed to move through the slagged horde, cutting down each bandit one by one. After a brief scan for stragglers, the two proceeded closer towards the horde to help Yang directly.

If Yang were to be honest, this was getting old. She was having a blast before, but now the bandits were just winning the endurance contest because there were more of them. Annoyed, but not quite fearing for her life, Yang checked over the crowd to see Weiss and Blake hurrying towards her, Blake readying Gambol Shroud to throw. Without hesitation, Yang stuck her arm out to catch it and let herself swing around on it out of the swarm of bandits. Yang didn't know what that ribbon Blake was using was made of, but man did she love swinging around on Gambol Shroud. Soon she was starting to swing back around to the crowd, and right when she faced it, she let go of Gambol Shroud, launching herself at the remaining bandits, right fist at the ready. Almost immediately the impact sent most of them flying right into a longbow cryo field grenade, courtesy of Weiss. Within seconds the sprint the bandits made to escape slowed to a crawl, then all that remained of the initial horde were either crushed, charred, slagged, cut into pieces, missing a large part of brain, or most recently, transformed into chunks of reddish pink ice.

"Wow, Weiss! They really froze up when they saw you" Yang congratulated, still panting from her delaying act from beforehand.

"I'm… not going to even honor that with a response" Weiss replied, cradling her face in her palm at Yang's awful pun.

Their respite was short lived however, as one more set of challengers lumbered out of the fortress, a squad of heavily armored nomads with a rocket launcher in one hand and a shield in the other. Acting out of reflex, the team dived out of the way of the first salvo, regrouping behind a rock.

"Did you have a plan for this?!" Weiss asked in panic

"No, but I can make one" Ruby answered, "I can't snipe them through their shields, so I'm going in close" she concluded, unfolding Crescent Rose into its scythe form. "Cover me!" She yelled behind her, zig zagging towards the heavies. The rest of the team moved up as well, Yang charging forward again, Weiss preparing another glyph and cycling through Myrtenaster's chambers, and Blake looking for a flank.

What the nomads expected to be an easy kill turned into a surprise as Ruby appeared in front of them in the blink of an eye. Before any of them could react, one saw the blade of her scythe come dangerously close to his face as it hooked itself into the open panel of the shield he used to see through. With a shot from Crescent Rose, Ruby flew up into the air, dragging the shield out of the nomads hands with her, before launching herself away with another shot that landed in one of the other nomad's back. The nomad with the missing shield turned around in confusion before feeling a tingling, then a burning as a shock round and an incendiary round both hit him in the chest, making him collapse to the ground in shock.

Seeing an opportunity, Blake rushed into the fray as soon as Ruby left it, placing herself between two of the nomads and trying to rough them up to no avail due to their shields. The two nomads took aim at the assassin that stood between them before firing, and once again, being fooled by Blake's decoy, blowing themselves up.

All that stood were two more nomads, one reloading their rocket launcher, and another just finished, the one with the loaded launcher fired, catching Yang in the blast. They both sighed in relief at the fact that at least one of the vault hunters had gone down, only to do a double take as a plume of fire erupted from where the blonde stood, who was now sprinting forward, her roid shield broken and empowering her strikes. Her shotgun assisted punch ripped through the shield and continued into the gut of one of the nomads, sending him rocketing back with a conspicuous hole in his stomach, and the other, terrified by the sight, dropped his gear and fled. Soon after, a shot rang out and his leg began to ice over before another set of shots, one of each element, confirmed the shooter to be Weiss.

"Weiss, he was running! We didn't need to waste ammo on him!" Ruby cried, trying to hide that even though she recognized the necessity of it, and she had done it before, killing still shook her up a little.

"He would have called for help, and I am not dealing with more of this riff raff right now" Weiss responded, before shooting the debilitated nomad in the head with a corrosive round, dissolving the corpse.

"Oh, right" Ruby realized.

"So this is the place? I was expecting something more… subtle" Blake remarked, trying to divert the conversation.

"It's on the coordinates I have, this is our best bet" Weiss answered, displaying the map on her ECHO to illustrate our point.

Before that could be further discussed, Ruby appeared behind her team, Crescent Rose on her back. "Great job, team! Now let's start on finding ourselves a vault!" she exclaimed, her cape billowing in the wind as she pointed dramatically at the entrance of the fortress.

END OF CHAPTER 7

Told you I'd get em on the road! Also, to clarify, Weiss's glyphs are digistructed projections that act roughly like her canon glyphs, which include the functions of launching and ensnaring like in the White trailer and in V1 among other things.


	8. The Journey's First Finding

Chapter 8: The Journey's First Finding

The interior of the fortress turned out to be more of a giant courtyard than any organized fortress. A wide open space spanned as far as Ruby's eyes could see, stopped only by the massive walls and dotted with cobbled together shacks and guard posts surrounding a central point, which Ruby could not see behind the aforementioned guard posts and shacks. Soon more bandits who ignore the previous alarm (or slept through it) stumbled out of their shacks, annoyed at the blaring noises that filled their abode before one of the psychos began to point at Ruby and her team and scream, drawing the attention of the bandits to them. "Them's the intruders, boys! Get em!" one of the nomads yelled, heralding the counterattack with a spray of machine gun fire.

"Hey look, Weiss, more riff raff" Yang quipped at the sight of the bandits, an annoyed grumble being the only response from Weiss. Quickly moving behind one of the empty shacks to avoid the hail of bullets and thrown axes, Ruby called out "Freezerburn!" before launching herself to a different position with Crescent Rose. Weiss and Yang, recognizing the command, nodded to each other before Weiss threw out one of her cryo field grenades again, spraying out a zone of ice that tripped and froze some of the advancing bandits before Yang leapt into it fist-first, kicking up an opaque mist that acted like an impromptu smoke bomb, concealing the movements of the team. When the mist cleared, none of the vault hunters were in their original position behind the shack, leading the bandits to mill around in confusion, wide open to a surprise attack from Blake and Weiss, who darted in and out of the horde, Weiss with Myrtenaster's digistructed rapier blade active and Blake with Gambol Shroud's blade fully extended. Between Blake's decoy's and Weiss's propulsion glyphs, none of the bandits could draw a bead on the two as they thinned the herd with sword and shot. However, another of the heavy nomads, shield in hand, caught Weiss unawares and bashed her out of the striking range with his shield. Annoyed at a display of such audacity, Weiss projected a propulsion glyph behind the nomad, launching him toward her as she was still flying from the shield bash before landing, regaining her footing, and looking for an opening on the nomad in his disoriented state, which proved difficult due to his heavy armor, preventing Weiss from finishing him off in one round of shots. Just as she did with the crowd, Weiss danced around the heavy nomad, never remaining in one place for too long, but still sneaking in a strike from Myrtenaster, either a stab or a shot, to open up his defenses. The opening came when the nomad landed a grazing punch on Weiss's shoulder, activating her cryo spike shield and afflicting the nomad with ice, slowing his movements, which Weiss exploited to lunge at a strip of his face uncovered by the tough cloth of the rest of his outfit and thrusting Myrtenaster into it before violently removing it with the recoil from an incendiary shot.

When Weiss looked back at the horde from her one on one encounter, she saw Yang once again fighting on all sides as the bandits mindlessly rushed her and Blake, whose decoys helped take some of the pressure off of Yang. The arrangement could not last, however, as slowly the numbers advantage of the bandits began to kick in before Weiss hatched a plan, activating her ECHO device to relay it to Blake and Yang.

"On a count of three, you both jump and throw a grenade!" Weiss ordered through the ECHO

"Are you sure? We'll just land-" Blake began before Weiss cut her off

"Just trust me, ok?!" Weiss pleaded "One… Two… Three!"

Thankfully Yang and Blake jumped right as Weiss called out "three", being launched in the air by her propulsion glyph even higher, after which they both threw one of their grenades and landed a fair distance away as the combination of a slag grenade and a Torgue cluster bomb worked its magic.

Irked by the massive losses, the unseen dispatcher of the bandit forces released a squad of technicals into the midst, swerving around on their way to the team. One did not go far however, as its driver and its passengers became another example of Ruby's excellent marksmanship, all of them receiving a hand loaded sniper bullet to the head and tumbling out of their spots on the technical and onto the ground.

Without hesitation, Ruby and her teammates clambered onto the newly vacated technical, Yang in the driver seat, Blake operating the explosive barrel catapult, and Weiss and Ruby in the bed of the technical with their guns ready to shoot down anything Blake couldn't deal with using the barrel catapult. Their first challenger decided to drive alongside them and try to "board" them, but only one would be assailant made it off their technical before Weiss dissolved the wheels with a corrosive shot, only to receive a launch into the air from a propulsion glyph and a shock bullet to the heart, landing with a _thud_ behind the hijacked technical of the vault hunters, still convulsing from the electricity contained in Weiss's bullet.

The next technical, with rocket launcher equipped bandits in tow, tried to keep its distance and wait for Yang to make a mistake so the rocket launchers could get a clear shot. Yang would have none of that however, as she tried to hatch a plan. "Ruby, can you snip em?" Yang asked.

"I would, but it's kind of hard to hit a moving target when you're moving too" Ruby answered, "At best I can scare them"

"Good enough for me, sis" Yang replied, her scheme coming together.

Ruby began firing Crescent Rose as a distraction while Yang crept closer and closer, eventually driving directly side by side, which the bandits hadn't noticed thanks to Ruby's suppressing fire. It was at this point that Yang swerved around so that she was right next to the driver of the technical and removed one of her hands from the steering wheel to slam her fist and a generous helping of explosive buckshot into the driver, leading to the unmanned technical spinning out of control and slamming into one of the shacks.

The last technical, somehow being driven by a psycho, sped directly towards Yang, prompting her to yell out "They wanna play chicken! We're jumping out when I honk, alright?!". Her team nodded hastily, and just as the two technicals were about to combine into one pile of sun-kissed scrap, Yang slammed her hand on the horn before leaping out of the driver seat with Blake, Weiss, and Ruby following suit. Thinking fast, Blake pulled out Gambol Shroud and shot the explosive barrel still mounted on the catapult, ensuring none of the psychos survived the crash.

The vault hunters experienced a hard landing, but nothing compared to the psychos, who likely died in the impact with the hijacked technical combined with the detonated barrel. They all landed facing the ensuing explosion, silent and gathering their breath before Yang bursted into mock tears and pounded her fist on the ground theatrically

"NOOOOOO! WE LOOKED AT THE EXPLOSION! WE WERE SO CLOSE TO BEING COMPLETE BADASSES! OH MISERABLE FATE WHY HATH THOU FORSAKEN US?!" Yang lamented theatrically and nonsensically, earning an eye roll from Blake, an annoyed stare from Weiss, and Ruby playing along, the younger sister also beating the ground in feigned grief and cursing the stars above for the curse of "looking at the explosion".

Ruby and her team took a brief moment to catch their breath before they advanced towards the mysterious center of the camp and catching sight of what looked like a blast door in a depression on the ground.

"Hmm" Ruby wondered, crouched over the door and poking it. "I wonder how we can open-AAAAAAGH" she cried out as the door suddenly opened while she lost her balance, causing her to fall in.

"Ruby! Dont worry, I'm coming! Yang exclaimed, diving down the hole after her sister. Weiss and Blake, however, were weighing the possibility of a trap before the door slammed shut, at which point they both activated their ECHO devices to try to get ahold of either Ruby or Yang. They heard a few _thumps_ and _thuds_ and some pained groaning before Ruby came on the ECHO. "We're okay guys! Really, it was just kind of a long fall" Ruby said sheepishly. "We're in some kind of facility with some locked doors. We'll check this place out. There should be a way out but please look for a way out from up there too" Ruby asked.

"Alright, Ruby. Let us know when you need us" Weiss replied before investigating the door with Blake. "No switches, no hinge, nothing. It must be somewhere else" Weiss decided, motioning for Blake to follow.

Meanwhile in the basement Ruby and Yang surveyed their surroundings before finding a strange oblong box. Yang walked over to it, and pressed one of the buttons on the side of the box, revealing a man in an Atlas military uniform, still as a statue, causing Yang and Ruby to recoil in surprise. After recovering from the shock, Ruby then found a locker, opening it to reveal what looked like a high tech shield and a high quality Hyperion sniper rifle. Grabbing both, Ruby turned around to see another door with the shape of a hand on a nearby panel. Putting two and two together, Ruby poked Yang to get her attention.

"There's a handprint lock on one of the doors, see if you can get that guy out" Ruby requested, pointing at the man in the box. With a simple nod, Yang walked over and tried to yank the man out of the box, trying to be careful about removing him from the box in one piece before throwing her hands up in frustration. Not even a moment later, however, and Yang, in a stroke of genius, pulled out a pocket knife from one of the pouches on her belt.

"Yang, what are you doing?" Ruby asked as if Yang had gone mad

"Well, you remember "721 Hours", Ruby?" Yang replied

"Yeah, what abou-oh ewww gross" Ruby realized, shuddering in disgust.

"I don't like it either, but… oh man I don't even know what to say." Yang muttered to herself, steadying her hands so she could properly use the pocket knife.

"Oh come on, this place doesn't seriously have no way to open that important looking door, do they?" Weiss asked in exasperation, wiping sweat from her brow.

"It wouldn't surprise me, anyone who comes to Pandora isn't usually here because they have good common sense" Blake answered, knowing of the logistical, administrative, and overall embarrassing blunders inevitable with Atlas sorry excuse for leadership near the end of its life, such as its famous 6 year old Admiral Mikey. Idly leaning against the wall, she accidentally pressed a hidden button, causing the section of wall to her left to reveal itself as a door. to a downward staircase.

"Should we go in?" Weiss asked.

"With no knowledge of what lies beyond and with the possibility that three gigantic guns are waiting to shoot us into the ground? Sure, this is our best course of action" Blake remarked snidely.

"Hey, I was just asking a-

"Relax, I know you're not _that_ dumb. This is probably the only way we'll get to Ruby and Yang" Blake continued. "I'll even lead, okay?"

With a grumble, Weiss followed Blake down the stairs and into the darkness in hopes of meeting with the sisters.

Back in the basement, Yang had finished her grisly task of "borrowing" the man's hand from him before placing it on the panel, hoping the near loss of her and Ruby's lunch would be worth it. "Welcome, Dr. Polendina, you have - _one-_ new message!" the intercom announced monotonously, announcing the success of Yang's plan before a video began to play automatically on one of the screens.

"Welcome, I am Dr. Polendina" the man currently in the box said amicably from the video screen. "If you're playing this video, I am in suspended animation in order to hide myself from the rogue assassin Athena. If Athena is no longer a threat, please release me from my suspended animation. I have some nice trinkets I'd like to share when you do" Dr. Polendina announced, before the screen went black.

"You mean he was still…" Ruby began, only to see one of the panels on the box Dr. Polendina laid in displayed a long past date with the phrase "ERROR: CRYOGENICS FAILURE, PLEASE CONTACT MAINTENANCE CREW" in flashing red. "Oh, never mind then" Ruby trailed off, looking to the newly opened door and being greeted with pitch darkness.

"Think it's more loot?" Yang wondered aloud.

"Even if it's not I wanna see it" Ruby answered.

"Shouldn't we wait for Weiss and Blake?" Yang asked

"Oh right, we shoul-"

"Speak of the devils and they shall appear" Blake deadpanned, walking in with a winded Weiss at her back, panting in exhaustion.

"I think you need more cardio" Yang suggested.

"Well I'm sorry, not all of us can have skyscraper legs!" Weiss huffed at Yang, glaring at Blake, who only answered with a smirk.

"Moving on, I found something for Blake! I heard you complaining about your shield going on the fritz, so I found a good one!" Ruby explained, handing the shield she found in the basement to Blake.

"The Bee" Blake read the label on the back, before equipping it and giving a small smile. "It's nice Ruby, thanks"

"Oh that's not all though! Yang and I found some super secret room that we should all see together!" Ruby rambled excitedly. "What are we waiting on, we're all together, let's go!"

And once again, Ruby and her team ventured into the unknown.

END OF CHAPTER 8

A/N: I swear if you fill my inbox with jokes about how OP the bee shield is I'm going to stick my hand in a wasp nest (not a beehive, because I'm spiteful like that). Other than that; yes, Yang is indeed a badass driver.


	9. Another Traveler

Chapter 9: Another Traveler

When Ruby and her friends ventured into the mysterious room, the dim light from the basement seemed to stop at the threshold, leaving them in pitch darkness. Weiss, having been in such a situation before, used one of her glyphs to provide a little bit of light to more easily find a light switch. In the glow of the glyph, Blake found a light switch, activating the pale yellow light bulb in the room's ceiling. What they finally saw came as a surprise. What the vault hunters expected to be a cache of unreleased tech, experiment notes, or _something_ of exorbitant value turned out to look a lot like the bedroom of a girl about their age. Posters of pop culture figures dotted the walls, an ECHO device lay on a small desk, and a simple bed took up one of the corners of the room. No girl lay in the bed, however, but a note did.

"Out to walk, be back soon" Ruby read on the note. "Well I don't think there's any loot here. Maybe there's another door in the main room" Ruby guessed, walking out of the strange room followed by her teammates.

What greeted them was a girl with a head of short, curly, ginger hair adorned with a pink bow clad in plain greys and beiges accented with bright green. The girl was young, about as old as Ruby, and was looking up from the floor as she lay there, seemingly unaware that normal social discourse did not occur with one side laying down.

"Salutations, visitors!" The girl exclaimed, causing the vault hunters to recoil in surprise.

"Uh, hi. Who are you?" Ruby replied hesitantly.

"I am Penny Polendina, Atlas's most recent development in- I mean- a vault hunter, like you!" Penny replied, with the last part being punctuated with a suspicious hiccup.

"Penny… Polendina? Oh. Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but…" Weiss pointed to the defunct cryogenic pod where Dr. Polendina, who Weiss presumed to be something like a father to the android.

"Father? Oh." Penny realized, getting up to investigate the cryogenics pod. After she saw the warning on the information panel, she fell silent and looked down at her shoes.

"We'll leave you alone for now, okay, Penny?" Ruby said carefully.

"That won't be needed. It would be rude to dismiss a friend. You are my friends now, right?" Penny asked, showing no overt signs of grief.

Ruby looked to her teammates who stood behind Penny. All of them, even Yang, made gestures and faces silently begging Ruby to say no, or change the subject, anything, just as long as Penny didn't follow them. Ruby, however, saw no reason to spurn a possible ally.

"Of course!" Ruby replied, much to the dismay of Blake, Weiss, and Yang.

"Sensational!" Penny yelled out, before leaping at Ruby and doing something between tackling and hugging her, a distinct _clunk_ from Penny hitting the ground removing all doubt that Penny was a notably humanlike robot. "What do we do now, friend?" Penny asked excitedly.

"Well." Ruby answered, "We were looking for a piece of something that would lead us to a vault. You don't happen to know anything about that, do you?"

"Wait. You're looking for a vault? Oh! This day gets better and better!" Penny shouted out. "I remember now, Mr. Ironwood told me that I would help find any possible extra vaults for Atlas after they open the first one, though I'm not as good at it as the other project, Gortys, I think she was called. I can still help!"

"Okay, that sounds -wait, Ironwood?!" Ruby exclaimed. "We know him too! Let's meet up with him and see if he has anything for you. Does that sound good Penny?"

"That sounds sensational!" Penny replied, bursting with excitement.

"I hate to be the party pooper, but can we at least go over this place one more time? There has to be more loot here." Blake cut in.

"Yes, you may. I need to gather a few things from my room anyway." Penny answered, disappearing into her room as Ruby and her teammates spread out to comb through the facility for any more goodies.

After thoroughly rooting through the depths of the bandit fortress, Ruby and her team, plus Penny returned to the technical Yang parked behind one of the nearby rocks when they first assaulted the stronghold. Once again Yang took the driver seat, Blake took the gunner seat, and Weiss rode shotgun, having called it moments before the thought occurred to Ruby, and Ruby and Penny sat in the bed of the technical. Once everyone was accounted for, Yang sped off towards town.

"Penny, if you need to say anything, just let me know. I think I have an idea of what you're feeling right now. I grew up with my sister while she was still dealing with it." Ruby said over the hum of the technical engine, perturbed by Penny's lack of apparent reaction to her "father" being dead.

"Oh, don't worry friend Ruby. Father wouldn't want me to be too sad over him… passing. He knew something could have happened to him. He always told him that he'd be happy as long as I'm okay." Penny replied solemnly, before smiling a little. "But enough on that. Father wouldn't want me to dwell too much on it."

"Alright then. I just want you to know if you need to talk I can listen" Ruby answered.

"Thank you for that, friend" Penny said.

"Hey! Not to interrupt your conversation, but we have some trouble up ahead." Weiss interrupted, pointing at a makeshift roadblock, complete with psychos hooting and hollering.

"Trouble?" Penny asked.

"Bandits." Ruby replied.

"Oh! I can help with this. I'm combat ready!" Penny exclaimed, pulling out a Dahl pistol with the trademark "wings" unique to E-Tech guns, which glowed a bright green with corrosive ammunition. Leaning out of the bed of the technical, Penny aimed in the general direction of the roadblock and fired off a few bursts from the pistol, the E-Tech enhanced shots homing in on each of the psychos before detonating in a burst of acid. With the chance of getting pelted by buzz axes eliminated, Yang hit the boost to smash through the ramshackle roadblock and continue on the path to town.

As Yang pulled into the garage again, walking out of the technical to take a cursory look at the town square, she saw a crowd gathering outside the tallest building where she and her team met Winter, Ironwood, Ozpin, and Glynda. The crowd looked up at the balcony in confusion; some pointed and looked at others asking for questions, others simply stared, as if in a trance. Meanwhile Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Penny were sitting on the floor of the garage divvying up the loot from the facility, seated on the floor around a haphazard pile of guns, shields, and grenade mods.

"So Penny gets the booster shield." Ruby started, looking at a handheld whiteboard as she handed Penny a Dahl booster shield, "I get the Invader to salvage for parts" Ruby continued, grabbing the impressive looking Hyperion sniper rifle (that wasn't Crescent Rose) "And, oh whoops. I didn't write down anything else."

"Mmm. The rest isn't really that good anyway, we can sell it and split the money" Blake suggested.

"Uhh, yes! I was just about to think of that." Ruby stammered. "What's going on out there Yang? Someone yelling about getting shot in the face?" She asked, noticing how Yang stared out of the doorway.

"No, you would know if it was that. There's some commotion outside. You want to go check it out?"

Without a verbal answer, Ruby walked up to the doorway with Yang followed by Blake, Weiss, and Penny, and noticed the gathering of townspeople outside the tall building. Soon after they all sought entry, elbowing their way through the crowd to the door except Blake, who seemed to fade away again, not bothering to push through the masses before Weiss pounded on it, demanding entry in hopes her voice was enough to convince Winter, who she assumed to be at the door, to open up. Wordlessly, the door opened and Weiss and the team quickly entered before the more impatient townspeople tried to barge in.

In the building Weiss could hear a conversation from the second floor. Four voices comprised the conversation, Ozpin and Ironwood were the known ones, and two unknown ones made up the other party, one sounded like a desk jockey who stumbled their way through their life apologizing at every turn now trying to sound confident, and another sounded like a Hyperion loader bot, the distinct deep monotone giving it away. As she walked up to the second floor, she saw Ozpin and Ironwood conversing with a humanoid figure in a black baggy coat similar to the ones the nomads wore with a large red eye of a loader in place of a head. In the figure's hand was a hologram of a young man in a suit. Even in the pale blue of the hologram, Weiss could make out a cybernetic arm and a discolored eye, either from heterochromia or from one being a cybernetic ECHO eye. Sensing the tension, Penny backed away into the corner of the room while the conversation carried on.

"Look, Ironwood-up-your-ass, I've shown you the deed, like, what, 20 times now. I'm telling you, I'm rebuilding Atlas, I just need help from you." The hologram insisted.

"It doesn't matter what you say or what papers you have. Atlas is dead and it is going to stay dead. The last thing Pandora needs is another corporation sticking its nose in here."

"He seems unwilling. Perhaps we should cut our losses." the humanoid loader advised.

"Nah don't worry, LB. I got this." The hologram replied to the loader, apparently nicknamed "LB". "Okay, fine. Maybe I was a little rude, and maybe Pandora has a rocky history with corporations, but I'm gonna be different. I'll work with you, not against you. I'm gonna make the best damn company you've ever seen, but the last thing I'm going to do is run over any lives in the process. I've… seen enough of that already." The hologram disclosed, looking off to the side, likely remembering the dark times he mentioned.

"If you're telling the truth, then fine. I won't stop anyone here who wants to help you, but I'm too needed here to help directly. Best of luck to you, Mr... Rhys. You'll need more than luck, but it will be a good start." Ironwood said finally.

"Appreciated, General. I hope we get to work together some time later." The hologram, Rhys, replied, before starting to fade away.

"Wait! Did you mention Atlas?!" Blake inquired, having snuck in through the window.

"Blake! Why couldn't you have used the door?" Weiss asked, startled by Blake's sudden appearance.

"I feel exposed going through a door. But that's beside the point. Rhys, right? You mentioned Atlas?" Blake asked, her voice pointed with hostility at the mention of the fallen corporation.

"Uh, yeah. I kind of own Atlas right now. Wait, hold on... aw crap, don't tell me you're another of their assassins I've got enough pushback from another one about this already." Rhys groaned. "I'll tell you what I told her. I am not, have not been, nor ever will be like Jack or whoever the hell ran Atlas before. Enough lives have been ruined and I'm not playing that game, just look where it got those two companies. You don't have to worry about any disregard for human life from Atlas under me. Does that make you feel any better?" Rhys inquired, finished with his spiel.

"Not good, but yes, better" Blake answered, sensing the sincerity in Rhys's tone despite how irritably he made his promise.

"Well, I hear you're looking for a vault. Er, well everyone's looking for a vault, but I think I may have found something of use. Tell you what, come on over to my place and I'll show you what I have, LB will leave coordinates for you. Oh, and if you try anything funny when you come over, LB will toss you into last week figuratively or literally. He's resourceful." Rhys continued, trying to convince the vault hunters to come along. "Even if it turns out to be nothing, I got tons of loot I know I can't-"

"You said the magic word, count us in!" Yang interrupted.

"Oh, well okay then. See you whenever." Rhys replied, before his hologram faded out.

"Penny?" Ironwood thought aloud at the sight of the ginger girl,

"Mr. Ironwood!" Penny exclaimed, tackle hugging him only for him to not budge an inch as he ruffled her hair playfully.

"You have a lot to talk about I'm sure, but that can wait." Ironwood replied.

"So how does another try at finding the trail sound, ladies?" Yang asked.

"I'm always up for more exploring" Ruby answered.

"Whatever pays the bills" Weiss said in mild agreement.

"If it's with you all I'm sure it'll be interesting" Blake commented.

"So it's settled! We're off for another adventure!" Ruby declared.

"Adventure? Oh boy! I can't wait for another adventure-AAAAGH" an unknown voice revealed to be the lone surviving CL4P-TP or "Claptrap" unit rolled in before Blake stabbed its tire and pointed Gambol Shroud at its eye.

"'We' as in not you. You are not going anywhere. You are not making a _goddamned_ sound as long as I can possibly hear it. Are. We. _Clear_?!" Blake seethed menacingly at the Claptrap, displaying fury previously unseen by her teammates as her finger drew closer and closer to Gambol Shroud's trigger. "You have three seconds to answer. _One… Two…_ "

"AAAAGH! YES! YES MA'AM I PROMISE I'LL PLAY THE QUIET GAME. I'LL BEAT EVERYONE HERE AT THE QUIET GAME I SWEAR YOU WON'T HEAR A PEEP JUST DON'T SHOOT ME PLEEEASE!" Claptrap begged, unsure if he could find a replacement eye.

"Good answer" Blake replied, returning to her usual cool, collected demeanor.

"Wow Blake… you said exactly what I wanted to." Ruby said, shocked at Blake's outburst and thankful that she shut up Claptrap.

"Me too" Weiss added.

"Me three" Yang added as well.

"Sorry if that startled any of you, but… ugh. God, I hate Claptraps." Blake groaned, holstering Gambol Shroud before following Ruby out of the building and to their apartment.

"I didn't think he was too bad." Penny muttered to herself as she walked out the door behind the team of vault hunters.

END OF CHAPTER 9

A/N: Yes, Ruby hates Claptrap. Everyone hates Claptrap. Except Penny, but she just met Claptrap, so she can't make a judgement yet.


	10. A Visit to the Fallen Titan

Chapter 10: A Visit to the Fallen Titan

" _We are lightning... Straying from the thunder! Miracles of ancient wonder_!" Ruby sang along to the radio riding shotgun in the technical next to Yang while Weiss groaned in the technical bed.

"Why did we let you choose the music?" Weiss wondered aloud in annoyance. It wasn't that she didn't like Ruby's taste in music. Far from it, Weiss thought Ruby had much better taste than she expected her to have considering she was sisters with _Yang_ , who Weiss thought had the musical taste of a Hodunk, or "space hick", as they were sometimes referred to. If she heard another formulaic pop song one more time she would stick Myrtenaster through her ears, anything to save herself from the acoustic garbage that comprised Yang's musical preferences. No, she could listen to Ruby's playlists just fine… for about ten minutes before they became repetitive. They all had roughly the same theme and it just got kind of stale.

"She called shotgun, Weiss, and if you have anything besides your boring classical drivel to play, be my guest." Yang answered, keeping her eyes on the road.

"It is _not_ boring! You just can't appreciate it." Weiss huffed indignantly; her pride wounded at having someone who she thought had no place to criticize her tastes doing exactly that.

In the gunner seat, Blake grumbled, her nose in one of her cleaner books while Weiss and Yang carried on with Ruby nervously trying to defuse the conflict. Weiss and Yang always bickered. Blake was almost impressed at how easily Weiss and Yang got into arguments. Even trivial things like which side of the technical bed they sat in when Yang couldn't drive became heated topics for the ex-heiress and the brawler. While Ruby was hurt at Weiss's initial harshness, Yang fought back, both for herself and for her sister. Saying that the team's relationship with Weiss had a rocky start would equate to saying skags only smell a little funny. Pair that with Weiss's past ties to Atlas and Blake had enough reasons to either convince the sisters to leave Weiss behind or just shoot Weiss herself. On the other hand, she had just as many reasons not to do either of those previous things. As insufferable as Weiss was at first, she proved competent enough when she saved Blake from grievous injury at the hands of a goliath Ruby had enraged out of boredom. In addition, an act of unwarranted (as Ruby and Yang would see it) malice against a lone traveler who proved helpful like Weiss would not sit well with the sisters, nor with Blake. Weiss didn't ask to be the daughter of one of the leaders of a corrupt corporate empire, and she had long since severed her ties to the now fallen corporate titan. At least that's what Weiss told her, but Blake knew how easy it was to lie, she herself being experienced in noticing lies. Curiously enough, what finally buried the hatchet between the four was Blake letting slip that she was a faunus and an assassin for Atlas. In a move that would have disturbed Blake if she wasn't panicking at her accidental confession, Weiss comforted her, not quite apologizing for her attitude, but nevertheless promising to make amends for what happened to her, even if she wasn't directly involved. Now, long after that conversation, Weiss had mellowed out a little, and Blake learned to deal with Weiss's still abrasive personality. She even found it endearing sometimes. Above all else however, Blake wanted to leave her past behind. She refused to become the soulless weapon that Atlas tried to turn her into, and if that meant tolerating someone as querulous and haughty as Weiss, she could live with that.

A ringing from all four of the team's ECHO devices broke the verbal battle between Weiss and Yang as the ID of the communicator back in the town of Newer Haven appeared on the screens of the devices followed by the distinct drunken slur of Qrow.

"So you're heading to that Hyperion stooge's place, huh?" Asked Qrow, having caught wind of Ruby and her team's plans.

"Uncle Qrow?! How do you know where we're going?" Ruby replied, surprised that Qrow knew despite his absence from the conversation of the previous day.

"I have my ways. You don't get to be Oz's field agent without them, kid. Anyway, I'm calling to let you know of anyone that might be associated with this Rhys guy. There's… let's see… hat chick, dreads chick, buff glasses guy, and tiny ball-" Qrow listed before a struggle was heard through the ECHO and another voice came through. "Give me that! They probably can't understand you through your drunkenness. _Ahem_. Hello Weiss."

"'Hi Winter!" Weiss answered enthusiastically.

"Uhh, is uncle Qrow okay?" Ruby asked.

"I'm sure he's fine. Apologies, here are their _real_ names" Winter said, emphasizing her point likely to spite Qrow. "Fiona, Sasha, Vaughn, and Gortys. These are all the people we could link to this "company man". All we could pull up were their names however. Stay safe out there" Winter continued.

"Awww, you're cute when you care" Qrow's voice remarked. The sounds of another scuffle followed by some grunts and frustrated noises came through the ECHO again before it hung up.

"Well they seem to get along" Weiss thought aloud sarcastically.

"Ten bucks says they get together." Yang blurted out.

" _Eugh_. I hope not." Weiss shuddered, not exactly comfortable with the idea of her big sister being friendly with the drunkard, even if he really did raise Ruby and Yang.

"Moving on… how close are we, Ruby?" Yang asked.

"We're just about to…" Ruby trailed off as she looked up and saw a massive facility with the buildings of a long abandoned town on its roofs. "There! That real big set of buildings!" Ruby pointed at the compound that the technical had just passed, forcing Yang to swerve around, barely avoiding collision with one of the buildings.

Unfortunately, the noise of the swerving technical alerted the bandits surrounding the facility. However, unlike the previous encampment, they were mostly psychos, as the more mentally sound bandits had long since given up on breaching the facility. Again, Ruby and her teammates dismounted the technical. And again, they readied their weapons.

After a brief fight, a notably more bloodstained team RWBY stood in front of the facility pondering on how to enter before a garage door opened and the humanoid loader in his black coat walked out again, Hyperion shotgun in hand.

"Hi." The loader said as he loaded the shotgun. "I will take you to Rhys. Do not try anything funny." He continued as the vault hunters followed weapons in hand in case it was a trap.

"How do we know this isn't a trap?" Blake asked cautiously.

As soon as she asked, the pale blue hologram of Rhys appeared again in the loader's hand. "You don't, but you're just gonna have to trust me."

"Why couldn't we just talk over this hologram?" Weiss questioned, sensing Blake's unease.

"Hey if we're gonna be working together I'd like to talk face to face. Just personal preference, is all." Rhys answered, unfazed by how skeptical the vault hunters acted.

"Do not worry. I know Rhys. He does not appreciate dishonesty." The loader added reassuringly.

"See? Loader Bot can vouch for me." Rhys boasted.

"Uhhh, no he can't. How can we be sure that you haven't just reprogrammed him to trust you?" Ruby inquired.

"Oh for-. Seriously I need you guys to work with me. It would be stupid of me to do something petty like that." Rhys answered in annoyance.

"Exactly why I'm suspicious. You look like someone who could leave here whenever you want, yet you're still here. If that's not foolish, then neither is Yang's taste in music." Weiss explained.

"Hey! It's not my fault you can't get with the times, Ice Queen." Yang shot back, partially in jest, and partially because she really didn't get why Weiss hated pop so much.

"Please stop. Waffle-O." Said Loader Bot, trying to ease the tension in the conversation,

"We are not! We just met!" Weiss replied.

"You get that reference?!" Ruby and Yang exclaimed in surprise.

"I was sheltered, not some temporal fish out of water. I can understand pop culture too." Weiss grumbled.

"Regardless. We are here. Gee, time flies when you bicker like old people" Loader Bot announced, his deep monotone somehow conveying annoyance. "Try anything funny, and I will make you look funny." He added, brandishing his shotgun to illustrate his point before walking off into another part of the facility.

The innocuous looking door to the office Loader Bot lead the vault hunters to was already open, revealing a plain desk in front of a metal folding chair. In the chair sat a young man whom they presumed to be Rhys, currently facing the back of the room which had a bulletin board utterly covered in assorted document clippings, maps, charts, and other text that was illegible from the threshold of the office. Hearing the footsteps of Loader Bot grow softer, the man somehow turned himself and the folding chair to face the vault hunters, his fingers tented under his chin.

"Huh, didn't think you'd all actually come. Well then, greetings and welcome to the magnitude and splendor of the Atlas corporation" Rhys began sarcastically, gesturing at the modest confines of his office.

"Cut the meet and greet, company man. You said you had a lead on a vault. Spill" Weiss ordered.

"Straight to the point, huh? I can do that too." Rhys replied, getting up from his chair, and scrounging through his bulletin board before pulling out a map of Aegrus, a tropical region of Pandora, and laying it on his desk. "After some tinkering with Gortys I was able to find energy signatures of Eridium that exceeded a certain amount. Combine that with the map those other vault hunters found when they killed Jack, and I can point out the region of any vault. This one in particular has been named the "Vault of the Hunter" thanks to its location in Aegrus, a prime spot for exotic hunting." Explained Rhys. "But I'm sure that's not important to you. You want to know how to get there. First, I need you all to agree on something though."

"And that something would be…?" Inquired Ruby.

"A cut of the loot, any seemingly useless trinket goes to me, at least one rare piece of gear of each kind, and whatever junk you don't want. I need to get this company off the ground and I don't have the stuff to do it. Rhys requested. "Sound fair?"

"Fair enough, but if you break your end of the deal. I'm turning you into a puddle." Weiss threatened.

"What did I say?" Loader bot yelled from far away.

"Relax. I'm uploading coordinates of the place to your ECHOs, but I gotta warn you, The hard parts not getting around Aegrus, it's finding it from there, which is why I'm giving you a second set of coordinates. Go there and you'll meet some of my associates that are better equipped for this kind of thing" Rhys said, placating Weiss. "Aaaaand done. Happy hunting, ladies"

"Wait, Rhys. One last thing. Do you know of any Atlas project named "Penny"?" Ruby asked.

"I… can look right now" Rhys answered, looking through holographic screens on his cybernetic arm. "Hmm, no. No. definitely no. Oh no why did I save that? No… got it! She was another part of the vault hunting project, but she never got past initial testing due to "bugs…" Why do you ask?"

"Just idle curiousity. Thanks for the info!" Ruby chirped as she walked out of the office with her team.

"Man kids just keep getting weirder." Rhys commented to himself as he made a call on his ECHO device. "Hey there. Yes it's Rhys don't act surprised… well yeah you're my friend, but that's not the only reason I called. Some vault hunters are coming, they're looking for the vault too… uh, no, _don't_ shoot them, I don't care if they get a cut of the loot, I need that vault open… why? Well, because I'm awesome that's why, you wouldn't if I wasn't… yeah, whatever, just try to cooperate, they seemed decent enough… Okay… still though, thanks. Talk to you later" Rhys finished as he hung up and leaned back in his folding chair. "Man, the things I would do for a swivel chair-" he complained when suddenly an explosion rang out above him, causing some of the ceiling to collapse in front of him. A blonde, two redheads, and a brunette fell down the hole in front of him.

"Uh, can I help you?" Rhys asked cautiously.

"You can." The blonde eked out from under the three other people.

After helping the four up, the short ginger bounced up to him with a disturbingly wide smile.

"Hi! We heard you know where a vault is! You know it's rude to keep secrets don't you?" The ginger asked, brandishing her modified Carnage shotgun.

"Ah heh, yeah! I know. But before we get to that, can you please put that away so we can talk. Y'know, like adults? It's making me uncomfortable." Rhys remarked.

"Hey, no horseplay" Loader Bot commanded from behind them.

"Nora." the brunette with the pink streak in his hair admonished.

"Fine." Nora pouted in disappointment, placing the instrument of destruction in the holster strapped on her back.

"So do you have some info or not?" The blonde asked.

"It's right here, just a sec." Rhys replied, uploading the two coordinates he gave to the previous team to the ECHO devices of the team in front of him. "There, happy hunting. Also bring back a few things for me."

"Sure, don't worry." The redhead replied as she climbed back up through the hole in the low ceiling, grabbing the blonde with her followed by Nora and the brunette.

When the second team of what he presumed to be vault hunters left, he sighed, leaving a message for his contact that another team was coming before leaning back in the chair and chuckling to himself.

"Hehheheh. You've got your work cut out for you this time, Fiona." Rhys muttered as he turned back to his bulletin board, poring over the mess of data.

"Are you sure it was a good idea to give them that information?" Loader bot asked.

"I'm sure it'll be fine. They seemed decent enough, and if they're not, I'm sure Fiona could use something to beat up on since we're not stuck with her anymore.

"That is an accurate assertion." Loader Bot agreed.

"Of course it is, LB. I didn't get here by being a bad planner.

"Are you sure? The top floors have a much better view." Loader Bot argued.

"Yeah, but basements are so much better for plotting." Rhys countered.

Outside, the hum of a technical once again took residence on the road. This time however, two runners traveled along with it, both roads leading to a single point, making it so that they would all meet.

END OF CHAPTER 10

A/N: For those who dont know, WAFFLE-O is a refrence to a quote from Ray from Rooster Teeth. It means "We are friends, friends love each other". Also I changed a line because I established Blake to be a bad liar in an earlier chapter. Whoops!


	11. And So They Met Again

Chapter 11: And So They Met Again

In the afternoon sun, two runners sped along the dusty roads of Pandora. Unfortunately for the drivers, the particular road that they drove on could hardly qualify as such. The wildlife of Pandora roamed the cratered and dilapidated route, and small bandit encampments dotted the edges of the place. Bullets and rockets whizzed over the runners as they swerved and weaved through the wild skags and more foolish or insane bandits.

"Remind me again. Why couldn't we have just taken a _normal_ road?!" Jaune complained, barely averting a collision with a shield wielding nomad before sideswiping a psycho trying to climb aboard the runner he and Pyrrha were riding.

"Oh don't be such a baby! This is the fastest route to Aegrus. Besides, isn't this fun?" Nora answered through the ECHO as she manned the rocket launcher of Ren's runner and fired off grenades with Maghnild, cackling all the way.

"This isn't my idea of fun at all!" Jaune cried as he ran over a skag to dodge another salvo of rockets that exploded where Jaune was barely two seconds ago. "I almost crashed at least five times in the past two minutes!".

"But you didn't!" Pyrrha encouraged from the gunner's seat, laying down suppressing fire with the mounted machine and some thrown singularity grenades.

"Yeah! _Almost!_ " Nora agreed.

"That doesn't make me feel better!" Jaune ranted, adrenaline running through him in response to the hail of munitions he was barely evading.

"Regardless, focus on driving. Nora and Pyrrha will keep us covered." Ren advised, his voice only slightly raised to be audible over the gunfire while taking quick glances at map on his ECHO. "We don't have long anyway; we're at the tail end of this road before we enter Aegrus."

"Oh thank god. I don't know how long I can keep this u-WALL! WALL UP AHEAD!" Jaune yelled, a sizable gated wall obstructing the road with heavy nomads on either side, their rocket launchers pointed down at the road.

"Oh no, not good not good not-... Wait! I have an idea, when I honk, we all jump!" Jaune announced hastily, continuing to race forward into the wall before getting out of the driver seat, placing his feet on the horn, and kicking off of it and out of the runner. Pyrrha followed suit, and they both walked away in as dignified of a way as they could as the now unmanned runner got totaled by a salvo of rockets, the ensuing explosion causing Jaune to panic and scramble away.

Meanwhile Ren and Nora, having received Jaune's instructions, prepared for their exit. Ren packed up his ECHO and stealthily dismounted from the driver seat, sneaking off as far away as he could while Nora dropped a magazine from Maghnild's receiver into the gunner seat along with a few Torgue cluster bombs before making a show of leaping out of the gunner seat. Then, while the nomads reloaded, Ren and Nora's runner smashed into the gate before exploding in an unusually large storm of heat and shrapnel, killing the nomads near the blast, incapacitating the ones further away, and leaving a gaping hole in the makeshift wall. While the bandits stared at the massive explosion, the team of vault hunters dived for cover behind one of the rickety vacant shacks, unnoticed by the bandits.

"Alright, I'll look for a way to flank them so we can go through the hole. Ren, you can sneak up on any heavy guys." Jaune instructed, having become the team's unofficial tactician after a run in with some old Hyperion bots revealed his strategic talent.

"Will you need cover Jaune?" Pyrrha asked.

"Uh, yeah, probably. So you'll watch my back, Pyrrha, and Nora…" Jaune trailed off, noticing Nora's trademark too-wide smile, her eyes gleaming and full of excitement.

"Hammer" Jaune finally said.

"Can do!" Nora yelled, extending the handle on her grenade launcher as she rushed into the fray. Ren dashed off to look for a flank, while Jaune, with his old rifle in hand, looked for an unguarded route to the tunnel, trailed closely by Pyrrha scoping out the battlefield with Milo.

While Jaune and Pyrrha sneaked around, Nora was acting as a distraction, launching herself with Maghnild and spewing explosives every which way, either with Maghnild, or with her cluster bombs. One particularly brave bandit shot her point blank with an electric pistol, expecting that to incapacitate the diminutive berserker. However, the only response from Nora was a grin and a crackling sound akin to lightning as capacitors in her clothes charged up in response to the electric bullet, granting her a burst of energy which she used to smash a tightly gathered mass of psychos through the undamaged portion of the wall, leaving people shaped holes along with the one caused by the rigged runner. At the same time, Ren stalked the bandits with a stronger sense of self-preservation that tried to stand back and take potshots at Nora. As soon as they drew a bead on Nora, they would receive either a spray of gunfire or a quick slash to the throat. However, Ren was forced out of hiding when Nora, in her one woman demolition spree, blew the helmet off a goliath, causing him to fly into a rage. The goliath made short work of his former comrades and began to grow more powerful, beginning its search for more victims, at which point he noticed Ren and leaped after him.

Seeing that he could not hold back against such a powerful foe, Ren dropped his pistols, leading the Goliath to stare in confusion before screaming and charging at him. Predicting the charge and the attempt to grab him, Ren ran at the goliath before sliding under its legs and slamming a palm between his legs. Even in its enraged state, the goliath doubled over in pain before trying again. Again, the goliath charged at Ren, and again, he dodged the charge, this time thrusting a palm into its back, followed by a sickening crunch. The goliath's upper half fell over, now flopping around uselessly as its legs tried again to run down Ren. This time, however, Ren stood his ground and delivered a final palm strike that the goliath ran straight into, damaging its heart to the point that the goliath could only fall over in a heap on the ground, its incessant stream of threats and obscenities finally silenced. Dusting himself off and re-equipping his pistols. Ren then continued his watch, taking down anyone who could get a shot off on Nora.

"So why did you trust me with driving again?" Jaune asked as he and Pyrrha searched for a flanking position. In response, Pyrrha involuntarily thought back to her days as an Atlas soldier. She thought back to the day she crashed three runners in one day and somehow crashed the third one while parking it. "Ah, heh. No reason in particular." replied Pyrrha, not keen on letting Jaune know she could consider herself one of the worst drivers on all of Pandora.

"Hold up." Jaune commanded, pointing to two bandits who decided to stand guard rather than attempt to enter the storm of explosions and broken legs caused by Nora. Pyrrha wasted no time in firing a clean headshot into one bandit, while Jaune's first shot bounced off one of the makeshift armor plates equipped by the second bandit before one shot entered his gut and third finally landed in the side of his head, ensuring he wouldn't call attention to his location. While Jaune grumbled in annoyance, Pyrrha smiled and nodded in approval before another one of guards approached, one of them armed to the teeth with grenades and nothing else. Jaune, frozen in shock, could barely register a strange sound before all the pins on the grenades seemed to pull themselves, prompting the bandit to rush at them in an attempt to take them down with him, only to be bashed away by the bronze edge of Pyrrha's shield, Akouo. After the explosion, Jaune and Pyrrha moved up, finally gaining entrance to the hole in the wall.

As it turned out, the sides of the road beyond the wall were lined with all sorts of weaponry. Crates of munitions, weapon racks, and a few red chests rested in piles, much to the wonder and annoyance of Jaune and Pyrrha. Wonder at the sight of so much gear, and annoyance at the fact that none of it could immediately clear out the bandits that Nora was currently distracting. "Wait… distract…" Jaune wondered, before coming to an epiphany. "That's it! We blow up this stockpile, and we can take the heat off of Nora!"

"What about the gear?" Pyrrha asked.

"I think what I've got now is doing fine, and the red chests should hold anyway." Jaune replied nonchalantly, pulling one of his plain Tediore grenades out of his pocket. "Plus, Nora's gonna love it." Jaune added with a grin.

Pyrrha giggled in response. "You wouldn't be wrong." She remarked, pulling out one of her singularity grenades.

Two distinct clicks of the pins coming out of a grenade were all that heralded Jaune and Pyrrha rushing out of the armory before slowing to a nonchalant stroll. Nora, picking up on their behavior, turned from a psycho to slam a particularly large goliath with her hammer into the hole before a massive explosion erupted in front of her, blowing the entire wall, and anything near it, sky high. It also proved an effective distraction as the remaining bandits stared in wonder, their last sight being the plume of fire and debris before they were either cut down by Ren or smashed away by Nora.

Waiting for a moment for the smoke to clear, Jaune was the first one to speak up. "Did we look cool, or did we look cool?" He asked, a big smile on his face as he could finally cross "walk away from an explosion like a total badass" off his bucket list.

"You. Were. AMAZING!" Nora cheered, zipping around Jaune and Pyrrha already singing praises in her excitement. Ren, however, wore roughly the same face he always did, save for a little smirk.

"Come on, now. No cheesy one liner? No shades? I'm a little disappointed." Ren joked. "So do you have a plan for our ride?" asked with more seriousness.

"Uh.. yeah I was just about to get to that." Jaune answered, pulling out his ECHO device and making a call. "Hey Ruby… I'm fine, how about you? Just on the road?... Okay. Well, our rides kind of got completely destroyed, so could you come over and pick us up?... Alright, we'll manage I'm sure. Thanks. See you soon." Said Jaune as he hung up. "Ruby and her friends are coming, but they only have one technical. So…"

"I'll hang on the sides!" Nora volunteered immediately.

"Okay… now for everyone else." Jaune declared, trying to think up seating arrangements for four extra people on one technical.

 _Meanwhile, with Ruby_

"Okay just sit tight; we're on the way… No problem, bye" Ruby said into her ECHO.

"We're picking up team JNPR. They're on the way, so we won't have to turn around." Ruby announced, Yang nodding as the map on her ECHO updated with team JNPR's location

"Who do you think crashed?" Ruby wondered aloud. "I'm thinking Nora did it.

"No, it was probably that blonde, he looked bad at just about everything." Weiss countered. Not in a harsh manner, but almost pitying.

"Eh, doesn't matter. Off we go to pick up more friends!" Ruby shouted.

 _Back with team JNPR_

"I didn't know you could cook, Jaune!" Pyrrha exclaimed happily as she and Ren delicately picked apart a portion of skag meat that Jaune had whipped up in one of the still burning campfires in contrast to Nora, who had already scarfed down her helping and released a loud, satisfied belch.

"Well you just kind of pick these things up when you grow up with seven sisters" Jaune mentioned nonchalantly, eating up some of his portion at a relaxed pace. "Oh! Uh, if you don't mind me asking, what was that thing that happened with the grenade guy? He just seemed to kind of blow up by himself." Jaune wondered.

Internally Pyrrha was kicking herself. She had made a rule for herself to use that ability with subtlety. Half its power laid in the element of surprise, and it would do no good for her to wave it around like a fancy new gun, even if it was devastating if she went all out with it. She should have kept her cool. The surprise made her forget, and now Jaune was asking questions.

"Well." she answered, "It's sort of a secret, but I guess if we're travelling together you're all going to find out anyway." She continued as she removed her gloves to reveal two glowing cores in the palms of her hands surrounded by scar tissue. "These allow me to manipulate polarity, so if it's metal, I can control it."

"Did it… hurt? Did it hurt when you got those?" Jaune asked, partially in concern, but mostly in shock that one of his friends had Atlas technology literally grafted into her hands.

"Not really, I was out from the anesthetics." Pyrrha answered, hoping to ease Jaune's concern, but noticing his face still expressed worry. "Really, it's not a big deal. I volunteered to get these. There's nothing to worry about." Pyrrha insisted, her gloves now hiding the strange devices.

"Alright. If you say so." Jaune responded. He still didn't believe in Pyrrha's insistence that whatever those things in her hands were weren't a big deal, but he decided not to pry.

The silence that loomed over the campfire fell apart at the distinct hum of a technical engine and the screech of its tires as it skidded to a stop near team JNPR filled the air, the driver's side, and Yang, facing them. "Get in losers, we're going vault hunting!" She declared cheerfully, accompanied by a honk of the horn.

"Uh, yeah so were we, but…" Jaune trailed off, staring at the technical. "How are all eight of us going to fit?"

….

"AAAAAAGH! THIS IS NOT WHAT I PLANNED!" Jaune cried as he clung for dear life to the bars on top of the driver seat while Yang drove along at breakneck speeds.

"AH HAHAHAHAHA!" Nora cackled, also clinging onto the side of the technical, but reveling in it unlike Jaune while Ren, Pyrrha, Weiss, and Blake were all crammed in the truck bed.

"Don't worry! I did this with Ruby all the time on my bike! You've got nothing to worry abou-ohhh crap we've got something to worry about!" Yang yelled, slamming the brakes at the sight of a deep mud puddle and accidentally throwing Jaune and Nora off, causing them to land just outside the puddle.

"Wheee! Do it again! Do it again!" Nora yelled, her arms up in excitement, a stark contrast to Jaune, who laid on the ground moaning.

"Uuuugh, are we there yet?" Jaune groaned in a daze as he stumbled to his feet, only to smack his head against a makeshift sign with the bold word "AYGRUS" painted in white. "Oh, good we're here. Or at least, closer."

"Well great, what am I supposed to do with the car?" Yang groused, seeing nothing but rough terrain and mud puddles that would swallow up the technical in the same way her and Ruby's dog Zwei would gobble up his food.

"I'm sure it'll be fine. There should be a fast travel station, and we stole that technical anyway." Blake reasoned, climbing out of the gunner's seat and stretching.

"Then it's settled! Sisters! Friends! Weiss! A hunting we will go!" Ruby exclaimed, marching off into the muddy tropics of Aegrus, both teams close behind.

END OF CHAPTER 11

Like what I did with Pyrrha? I like semblances too much to just leave them out, and making Pyrrha's fit in this universe was pretty fun! Also golly gee, what's with blondes and being great drivers in this fic? Eh, probably coincidence.


	12. A-Hunting They Went

Chapter 12: A-Hunting They Went

"God, walking sucks.", Yang complained, trudging through the sopping wetlands of Aegrus along with the other seven of the party, the mud sucking at her steps and some of it seeping into her boots. As much as she would have loved to finish off the venture into this exotic region of Pandora at full speed on a technical, the mud and water rendered that wish a pipe dream, forcing the eight vault hunters to travel to the coordinates Rhys gave them on foot. The trek, while nowhere near life threatening to eight well equipped vault hunters, still proved arduous. Aegran wildlife and its native inhabitants were both significantly tougher than those of other regions of Pandora. The witch doctors in particular infuriated Yang. Their arcane command over elements such as fire, electricity, and bats, of all things, made them especially difficult to handle. Of course, all the mystical powers in the galaxy could only keep the eight vault hunters at bay for so long before they succumbed to the maelstrom of destruction that the eight vault hunters comprised.

The party carefully scaled down the river that they followed after seeing that it dropped into a waterfall and saw what looked like a lodge in the distance. At the sight of the lodge, Yang brightened, hoping that she didn't have to slog through the mud for much longer, or hear Weiss complaining about slogging through the mud. It wasn't Yang's fault that she insisted on wearing a dress to Pandora, or "combat skirt", as she called it.

"Eugh, I'm not even sure if a corrosive shot could get all this dirt off." Weiss grumbled, attempting to wipe off the grime and muck on her white jacket in vain, which included the blood and bile of at least three different species of Aegran creatures. It was times like this that she wished she hadn't adopted such a close ranged fighting style.

"Weiss, it's fine. Everyone gets dirty down here." Ruby said, trying to calm Weiss, before catching sight of a gaggle of natives, or "savages", as they were commonly called, gathered around a decorated warrior statue. Their chanting fell silent as one of the savages took notice of the eight vault hunters, leading them to charge forward, with more coming out from unseen encampments, all yelling out battle cries in their foreign indecipherable language.

Almost instantly in response, all eight vault hunters drew their weapons, preparing for battle. They first split off into their two teams and ran up the incline behind them to gain the high ground. As soon as they did, Jaune noticed something worse than a band of savages; witch doctors. A gathering of them stood on the hill, casually walking forward to join up with the group of savages, staves glowing with both empowering and debilitating powers.

"Witch doctors, behind the crowd!", Jaune called out, trying to slow the advance of the savages with his Jakobs rifle.

"I got them!", Ruby answered, moving farther back behind her team and taking aim. Four shots rang out, and four witch doctors fell, unable to react to react to Ruby's shots in time, crippled by the bullets lodged in their kneecaps. The remaining handful, now aware of Ruby's presence, conjured tornadoes of energy around themselves, which acted as shields from the pinpoint accurate wrath of Crescent Rose before continuing their advance.

"Never mind, I don't got them!" Ruby announced, now moving her scope over the horde of regular savages and taking potshots at their legs, which did not fall under the protection of their strangely effective wooden shields or their masks.

"That's fine, if they're in tornado form they can't power up the other guy-AHH!." Jaune answered, a thrown axe just barely missing his ear. "We can't stay up here, there's no cover!", he added, throwing out a grenade before running off the exposed hilltop they stood on.

"Then we'll just have to get up close." Yang suggested, grinning in anticipation as she mounted her dual shotguns onto her wrists.

"Up close is my middle name!" Nora exclaimed, extending the handle of Magnhild

The two berserkers then leapt into the horde with a battle cry, their entrance heralded by a shockwave from Nora's hammer, violently knocking the nearest savages out of the crowd and launching them like ragdolls. Blake and Weiss, having taken note of how Yang's plan of "punch first, ask questions while punching" usually panned out, entered the fray as well, their presence marked by a fading holographic decoy and the glow of Myrtenaster's blade digistructing while the savages converged on Nora and Yang.

Meanwhile Ruby stayed back in her sniping spot, watching over the fight through Crescent Rose's meticulously calibrated scope, taking a shot at any of the savages that tried to get the jump on Nora and Yang every now and then, but unable to do much else. Not even her speed would allow her to avoid the fusillade of projectiles that the savages threw or fired if she wanted to use the scythe part of her beloved rifle. Unfortunately, a witch doctor, using his small stature to his advantage, blended in with the savages in the crowd. Only when strange yellow energy coursed through the savages did Ruby notice the witch doctor, promptly shooting another of her hand loaded rounds, but not at the witch doctor himself. Instead, the bullet landed in the ground behind him, causing him to turn around in alarm, suspecting an ambush from his flank. In the brief moments that the witch doctor turned around, Ruby lined up her shot, leaving a clean hole in the back of his head, and what she assumed was a much messier splatter of brain on the inside of his mask as he fell over, the glow in his staff fading. No longer content with sitting back and letting her friends take all the hits, Ruby activated her ECHO. "I'm going in close, get… more distracting!", she commanded, unfolding Crescent Rose's blade and dashing forward, leaving Jaune, who stayed back due to his lack of melee weapons, to grumble and cautiously move closer to the brawl. Not even five steps later and a stray savage leapt at him, axe in hand. In panic, Jaune fired wildly, either missing or hitting the savage's shield, leaving him unharmed as he closed in on Jaune and raised his axe into the air for a devastating blow. Without thinking, Jaune raised his rifle to block the savage's arm from completing the swing, creating a deadlock between him and the savage, which he broke by stomping on his foot and kneeing him in the gut. Before the savage could recover, Jaune took his rifle and bashed it against the side of the savage's head, but just as he was preparing to strike the final blow, a bronze colored blade appeared seemingly out of nowhere, sticking out of the savage's chest as he fell to the ground, motionless and bleeding. With the savage out of his field of view, Jaune saw Pyrrha, still in fighting stance after yanking the bayonet of her rifle out of the savage.

"I had him!" Jaune claimed in excitement. He had no idea he could do that, but those little lessons from Pyrrha were probably the reason why.

Pyrrha's only response was a knowing smirk before she moved to return to the horde that Yang and Nora were occupying, beckoning Jaune to follow.

At the same time, Ren snuck off once again, looking for any sort of long ranged threat that could hit Nora, Yang, Weiss, or Blake as they either cut down or crushed the horde of regular savages. It was then that he saw the witch doctors Ruby crippled at the start of the fight, still limping towards the battlefield, which Ren quickly stopped with a spray of his machine pistols. Afterwards, however, Ren caught sight of the savages' trump card. A warrior stood behind the now dead witch doctors, his mask much more decorated, his sword much more menacing, and three "O"s scrawled onto his shield. With the death of the witch doctors, the decorated savage let out a yell and began to advance forward. Ren, not willing to test his luck, decided to fall back and ECHO his teammates. "We have an elite savage coming in; he looks way tougher than the rest. Let Ruby's team know so we can group up to take it down.", he ordered to Jaune and Pyrrha.

"Alright Ren, I'll relay that plan to them, you try to keep it from getting too close until we're done with the regular guys." Jaune answered.

"Sure. Why not?" Ren deadpanned, turning to the elite savage and readying his pistols.

A few minutes of hacking and slashing later, and the crowd of savages had mostly dispersed, its members either dead, playing dead, or fleeing in terror and soon to be dead, courtesy of Ruby's marksmanship so they may not call for help. With the "small fries", as Yang called them, dealt with, they moved forward to where Ren was distracting the elite savage. As soon as they saw both of them, Ren was launched back to them by a blow from the savage, landing in a mess that would have concerned everyone if not for the shaky thumbs up he gave, signaling that it was nothing he couldn't walk off.

"Ren!" Nora exclaimed, before turning to the savage, her normally unsettling smile replaced with teeth bared in fury as she rocket toward the savage, only for him to block Nora's hammer and knock her back.

"It's really tough." Ren managed to groan, still catching his breath from getting knocked around by the savage for however long it took his teammates to get through the regular savages.

"Then we'll hit it harder." Yang declared, firing her shotguns as the rest of the two teams followed suit, firing their weapons at the savage, only to have most of their shots meet their end at his shield.

"Okay, maybe we need a plan." Ruby suggested, rushing off to the side and calling Weiss to come over with her. Yang and Blake, having been implicitly told not to follow, shrugged as Yang ran up to the savage, trying to catch its attention. Then, having succeeded, she tried to fight it one on one, but it was far too powerful, each strike of his sword felt like two strikes from any of the other savages. It was only a matter of time before Yang's shield broke, just as planned. Holding her hand out as the default signal for "I want to swing on your gun scythe thing", Yang received Gambol Shroud, still linked to Blake by the ribbon as she ran around the savage, the ribbon still in hand while picking up speed before finally leaping up, releasing the ribbon, and flying towards the savage, her roid shield and shotgun powered punch landing square in the savage's chest, sending him flying towards Ruby and Weiss.

Soon after, a blur of black and red seemed to fly at the savage. The distinct sound of Crescent Rose firing was heard before the blur zipped past the savage and he fell to the ground, a clean cut separating his torso and his legs as if his body had fallen apart on its own accord.

After picking through the battlefield for loot, the eight vault hunters regrouped in one of the campsites closer to the lodge, sitting on the log seats and recovering from the brawl.

"Well, that's enough excitement for me for a long time." Jaune stated, having almost died or been grievously wounded more times than he bothered to count within the last twenty four hours.

"Phew, I guess you could say they tried to _swamp_ us back there, didn't they?" Yang joked, causing some to roll their eyes or others (specifically Weiss) to actually groan.

"Hey! Would you keep it down out there! We're trying to plot!", a feminine voice complained from all their ECHO devices.

"Gah! Who are you, and why do you have our ECHO frequencies?!", Weiss questioned harshly.

"Number one, that was one of my associates that I was talking about. And number two, you're all pretty bad at encrypting your frequencies, if you couldn't tell already.", a male voice that the eight recognized as Rhys supplied. "They're in the lodge, go ahead and fleet and treat or whatever you do when you meet someone."

"The proper term is "meet and greet"" the monotone of Loader Bot replied.

"Yeah, that. Go say hi." Rhys suggested.

"Okay, here goes nothing." Ruby murmured to herself, knocking on the door of the lodge accompanied by her team as well as Jaune's.

"Again? Unless you're you've got a real good reason I'm not-" a woman in a professional looking shirt and jacket, complete with a black hat ranted before stopping herself and looking at Ruby and her friends, then picking up her ECHO device.

"These the ones you were going on about?", the woman asked.

"They are, Fiona. Tell em what you know, the more the merrier.", Rhys replied through the ECHO.

"Okay then…", the woman, apparently named Fiona trailed off before stashing away her ECHO device. "Welcome to the uh… 'Aegrus Sophisticates' Lodge'", she greeted before making room for the eight to enter. "Rhys already briefed me on why you're here, so you don't need to tell me anything yet. For now, just rest up. You all look, and smell, pretty bad right now.", she instructed, holding her nose to illustrate the point.

"Is this actually yours? Just idle curiosity." Blake questioned, gesturing at the walls of the lodge.

"Not really, but its owner is out and they left the door open, so their fault." Fiona replied.

"Hey Fi, the new guys here?", another voice called out, seemingly from above.

"Yeah they're here, come on down and say hi, Sasha." Fiona replied as a shorter woman with dreadlocks walked down from the previously unseen attic.

"So you're the vault hunters Rhys was talking about?", Sasha asked, looking at Ruby and Weiss. "I expected someone… taller."

"Excuse me?!" Weiss exclaimed, not particularly in the mood for any conversation, let alone mocking, playful or otherwise.

"Relax, I'm just joking around." Sasha added.

"Uhhh, one question. We just killed some guy with three "O"s on his shield, does that mean anything?" Ruby asked nervously, unsure if she was asking a bad question,

"Wait. Three "O"s? Did he have a really nasty looking sword and mask?", Fiona questioned, now much more interested.

"Yeah, he dropped this too.", Ruby added, pulling out a heavy Jakobs shotgun with its metal parts painted a dark blue.

"Outta my way, sis! Is that… that's a Twister! Ohhhh, Jakobs was testing this down here, their notes on it never even left the facility they built it in! I can't imagine how it ended up all the way here with these folks." Sasha jabbered excitedly. "Can I have it?"

"Mmm, do you have something in exchange? We're not exactly a charity." Weiss responded, still unsure of how she thought of the duo, who were apparently sisters.

"Can we at least shoot it before we decide?" Ruby asked.

"Why not.", Fiona decided.

Wordlessly, Ruby turned to walk out the door, loading the shotgun, and firing it. Blue tinted bolts flew out of the gun before they drew towards each other and formed themselves into a tornado that ripped through the area in front of the lodge.

"That's so cool…." Ruby trailed off in amazement. "But I already have Crescent Rose, and uh… who wants this?" Ruby asked, holding up the gun.

No one among her party raised their hand, not even Jaune. The only raised hand was Sasha, who was practically bursting with excitement at her status as the only taker.

"Okay then, here you go!" Ruby said, handing over the shotgun to Sasha.

"Ohhh thank you so much! I'll come up with something to pay you back, I promise!" Sasha cheered and then proclaimed, eyes poring over the gun like it was a work of art, which in Sasha's (and Ruby's) case, it really was.

"Awww. Adorable.", Fiona commented before clearing her throat. "Anyway, just chill out for tonight, we'll brief you tomorrow whenever you're up." Fiona declared, walking off to an unseen part of the lodge, presumably to sleep.

"Does this place have a shower or something of the like?" Weiss asked desperately, perturbed by the particularly heavy amount of grime and muck on her earned by trekking through Aegrus.

"Yeah, but only one." Fiona replied, still unable to be seen from the insides of the lodge.

Weiss wasted no time searching for it, launching herself around with her glyphs before finding it, rushing in, and slamming the door shut. As the water ran, her sigh of relief was only barely masked by the sound of the water.

"She's not from here, is she?", Sasha asked in response to Weiss's zeal in finding the shower.

"Nope.", Ruby answered.

"I figured as much.", Sasha added with a shrug.

A while later, when everyone had a turn in the shower, even after the hot water ran out, they came to the issue of sleeping arrangements.

"There are only five beds here, and nothing against you guys, but sis and I would rather have our own beds." Sasha informed the eight.

"Uh, okay. We'll figure something out." Ruby assured, pondering over the three basic beds and one couch, trying to figure out the least awkward way for everyone to get a place to sleep…

END OF CHAPTER 12

So about the Lodge having beds, I based it on the idea that that the lodge was originally for the vault hunters+Hammerlock, so 5 beds total. Also yeesh writing a fight for eight characters is hard, I dont even know if I did it right.


	13. Swamped in the Sights

Chapter 13: Swamped in the Sights

The main dining table of the Aegrus Sophisticate's Lodge was finally being put to use the next morning. The normally quiet housing buzzed with activity as its two regular residents and its eight extra guests chattered at the table over breakfast, which consisted of a combination of whatever rations they brought with them, some of the packaged food in the Lodge, and pancakes, courtesy of Ren, who managed to scrounge the necessary ingredients.

"How you made pancakes out of… whatever the hell was in the pantries, I'm not even gonna ask.", Fiona commented, cutting out bites from the appetizing stack on her plate.

"Oh Ren is the best at this! I can remember when we were stranded on some real far out place on Elpis during the dark and stormy night…"

"It was noon." Ren corrected, not even looking up from his stack of pancakes.

"We pondered on how to find our way back to camp, when suddenly a horde of twenty giant kraggons emerged from their hidden caves!" Nora exclaimed theatrically, as if narrating an epic tale.

"They were five regular ones.", Ren added, still casually eating his pancakes.

"It was in the final moments of our glorious battle that I made a fatal error, which had almost resulted in my untimely demise!" Nora continued, not even bothering to acknowledge Ren pulling the wind from the sails of her story.

"She tripped on one of the kraggons after we killed them all." Ren corrected again, his voice betraying no feeling towards Nora's theatrics, but hinting that he and Nora had done something like this many times before.

"And after the cataclysmic conflict, we celebrated our victory with delicious Kraggon steaks.", Nora finished, punctuating her narration by enthusiastically scarfing down more of her pancakes.

"That part is actually true, Kraggon is tough, but it's far from bland." Ren commented, never looking up from his breakfast the whole time.

Fiona, bewildered by the ginger's rambling, gave the taciturn gunslinger a look as if to say "Seriously?", which Ren only answered with a shrug.

"Well that's one way to start the morning.", Fiona deadpanned, sipping at the ration tea Blake generously provided with a chuckle. "So how'd you all sleep? I know you all had to improvise, but we've been sort of running ourselves ragged.", she explained, taking another sip of Blake's tea. "This is great stuff, I need some of this for later.", she commented, her haggard face lit up with a smile.

"Eh, don't worry. We figured something out." Ruby answered, trying not to think back to how awkward it was to be sharing a bed with her sister for the first time in years and watching Jaune and Pyrrha blush like tomatoes at the mention that they would be sharing a bed. She tried especially hard not to think back to how Weiss and Blake attempted to make some sort of divider for the bed they shared, only to wake up in each other's arms the next morning, leading them to both yelp in surprise and launch themselves away from each other and off of the bed. "It went just fine.", she lied, an especially wide smile on her face attempting to mask the lie.

"Alright then." Fiona replied, finishing off her tea. "I'll be in the back room getting all our plans and info together, come on over whenever you're done.", she instructed before getting out of her seat at the head of the table and walking back into the unexplored areas of the lodge.

"Sfuu whuu yhuu dh-", Sasha tried to ask, her mouth crammed with pancake before she swallowed and tried again. "Ah, sorry, these are really good. How'd you all get this far? That vault map thing's made vault hunters dime a dozen. Most of them usually don't get a mile from their landing spot before bandits or whatever get 'em.", Sasha explained.

"Well, y'know what they say, better lucky than good.", Jaune replied sheepishly, all too aware of the notable difference in ability between himself and the rest of his companions. He wasn't hopeless, far from it in fact, he just wasn't on the level of Ren, Nora, or Pyrrha, who all looked like they could shoot their way through a bandit camp half asleep.

"I've heard that a lot.", Sasha commented, getting up from her seat. "I'll be waiting back with Fiona, you all come on over when you're done.", she said as she walked the same way Fiona did previously.

While Weiss was confident that Fiona and Sasha were well out of earshot, she still lowered her voice and commanded, "We are not speaking of what happened last night or this morning."

"Agreed.", Blake replied hastily, a blush creeping into her cheeks.

"Uh, okay." Ruby and Yang answered in unison, perplexed at the urgency in Weiss's voice.

….

"They're a weird bunch, aren't they?", Sasha asked, poring over the hastily scrawled notes they gathered on possible clues to the vault's location.

"Yeah, but you don't come to Pandora when you have a normal life.", Fiona countered, leaning back in the cheap folding chair, its front legs off the ground as she balanced with her feet on the table.

"Fair enough.", said Sasha as a blur of black and red zipped into the room, nearly crashing into the hastily gathered notes on the table.

"Ruby! I thought we talked about this!", Weiss admonished.

"We did.", the sniper groaned, straightening herself out after nearly crashing into the table. "So, what did you have for us?", Ruby asked, looking up at Fiona.

"Some dirty work, what I assume to be the usual for you all.", Fiona answered, taking her feet off the table and sifting through the jumble of note before pulling out one specific sheet. "Funny enough, we're not the only ones looking for this vault. The savages have been collecting 'artifacts' apparently. Could be nothing, could have something to do with the vault. Either way, you'll be handling them."

"Okay, is there anything else?", Ruby inquired, wary of the fact that most people didn't ask for only one thing to be done.

"From us, no. The bounty board outside might have something, but that should about cover it.", Sasha answered, gesturing to the door that lead back outside.

"Not to be rude, by why can't you do any of this yourself?", Weiss cut in.

"We have, it's been pretty slow going with what we have though, you guys are… better equipped for this." Fiona explained. "I do talking, not shooting."

"Fair enough.", Weiss agreed as Ruby didn't even wait before walking out the door to the "Catch-A-Ride" station outside, beckoning everyone else over with a hand gesture.

"I think that's your cue, be safe, make good choices, blah blah blah." Fiona finished, waving off the eight vault hunters.

…

"Oh this is so much better." Yang commented in relief, finally in a driver's seat and out of the miserable Aegran mud. The hum of the hovering fan boat's motor filled the air as she drove over the marsh and muck with Blake in the gunner's seat and Ruby and Weiss sitting on the edges of the craft, both of them holding onto the frame of the boat to steady themselves. Driving alongside Yang was Jaune along with his team, Nora in the gunner's seat and Pyrrha and Ren on the edges of the boat like Ruby and Weiss. The two boats were driven close enough for passengers on both to talk to each other without having to use their ECHOs, which Nora initiated with a wave.

"Hi!", Nora called out enthusiastically. "Which of the spots are you all going to?"

"We're going for the one in the west, I was thinking you guys could take the one to the east and we meet up to take the last one together. Sound good?" Ruby asked, having to raise her voice and turn her body around awkwardly since she was on the side of the fan boat that faced away from the other boat Jaune's team rode on.

"Sounds like a plan, have fun with that!" Jaune answered, turning his boat away as they headed for the eastern encampment that Fiona and Sasha asked the eight to investigate.

"How far are we from the west camp?" Yang asked, navigating the massive roots and rocks while trying not to make too harsh of a turn and accidently throw Weiss or Ruby off the boat before a bolt of electricity whizzed past her head and landed on a rock right next to the boat, prompting her to turn her head to see witch doctor glowing in electric blue energy atop a hill dotted with huts and totem poles. Not a moment after Yang turned to glance at the witch doctor, she heard a shot that she recognized as Crescent Rose before the witch doctor dropped his staff and doubled over in what looked like pain, his hands between his legs.

"Ruby, that's not okay!" Yang admonished, trying (and failing) to keep the laughter out of her voice. "How'd you even do that?"

"Uhhh, lucky shot I guess, I didn't mean to aim there I swear!" Ruby admitted sheepishly.

"Sure you didn't. They're sure to notice that though, better park this somewhere where it won't get wrecked.", Yang realized, driving the fan boat behind some thick foliage to hide it before she dismounted from the driver's seat, and landed, much to her annoyance, into another patch of mud. After taking a brief moment to sulk at her misfortune, Yang mounted Ember Celica onto her wrists, priming them for the close range action she reveled in.

"So what's the plaaa- never mind." Blake trailed off, noticing how the savages did not wait for them to advance, and instead charged down the hill, all of them hollering in their language or screaming incoherently as if shouting a war cry. Without a word, Blake leapt back, a hologram of her standing exactly as she did before her jump in her place.

With no time to formulate a strategy, the other three leapt away as well, Ruby and Yang using the recoil of their weapons to aid their jumps, and Weiss using a glyph to propel herself away. The close proximity of the savages made Ruby conclude that trying to shoot her way out would prove fruitless as the blade on her rifle unfolded, its silver edge gleaming in the sunlight. All the savages saw after the blade revealed itself was a dark red blur before a a part of their body violently separated from the whole in a spray of blood and a scattering of rose petals.

Meanwhile Weiss, Blake, and Yang, with no plan from Ruby or each other fell back to the classic "stay together and beat up anything that gets close" tactic. Slowly they advanced up the hill, ensuring to cover each other's flanks while doing so while Ruby zipped around with her speed. The savages, not known for their strategic genius, continued their futile assault on the 3 woman phalanx as they fell to the elemental charge in Weiss's bullets, the precise, almost surgical strikes of Blake's sword, or the overwhelming force behind Yang's punches. Little by little the charging hordes began to falter, failing at cracking the defense the three vault hunters had established while the fourth remained untouchable as she wreaked havoc on their numbers thanks to her speed. Only when the yellow glow of the witch doctor's staff empowered them did they begin to gain some traction. The traction was fleeting however, as a quick shot from Ruby or a grenade from any of the four disrupted the witch doctor's focus. Fed up with the distractions, the lone witch doctor swirled burning orange energy around himself and sped down the hill as a flaming tornado, forcing Weiss, Blake, and Yang to disperse. All their shots seemed to fly into the tornado one way and out the other, never actually making contact with the witch doctor.

"Stupid invulnerability phases, it's just like that one game…" Ruby muttered in frustration, dodging the thrown axes and gunfire from the savages as she tried to figure out a way to deal with the witch doctor and his now empowered cronies. "Just dodge for now! I don't think he can keep this up!", Ruby ordered on her ECHO, an axe narrowly missing her cloak and sticking into the ground.

"And what if he can?", Weiss asked in concern, blocking an axe with Myrtenaster's blade before retaliating with an incendiary shot.

"Uhh, I don't know, got another idea?" Ruby asked back, dashing away from a small group of savages and leaving behind a transfusion grenade, which sapped at their health and returned it to Ruby.

"Just one…" Weiss trailed off, noticing how the witch doctor's tornado sucked in bits of loose rock and vegetation before it came flying out. She pulled out one of her cryo field grenades and pulled on its pin, waiting for the fuse to reach just the right point, throwing it above the witch doctor. The flaming vortex sucked in the grenade, and before it could fly out like the stray rocks did, the distinct noise of a grenade going off came out of the vortex. Within a few moments the swirling flames receded to reveal the witch doctor caked in ice as more of the grenade's contents sprayed onto him. Seizing the opportunity, Yang launched herself forward, her fist rocketing into the frozen witch doctor and shattering him into chunks of pinkish ice.

"Man he was on a roll. Too bad he… _froze up_." Yang commented, intentionally leaving her ECHO on so her team could hear.

"YANG XIAO LONG I SWEAR TO-", was all Yang heard before she cut off her ECHO, chuckling to herself. She couldn't quite pinpoint that voice, it was most likely Weiss, but she couldn't rule out the chance it was all three of them, making her go from chuckling to outright cackling, causing the leftover savages to look at each other in confusion before shrugging and releasing another battle cry as they charged at the laughing brawler. Unfortunately for them, their shout snapped Yang out of her reverie, greeting the pair with an explosive fist to the gut.

Without the leadership of the witch doctor, the remaining savages stood little chance. When the four vault hunters finished off any stragglers, they began scrounging through the encampment, looking into every nook and cranny they thought to look into for something unusual or shiny. As Ruby and Yang assumed through the video games they played, the important item usually glowed or made a noise, _something_ to distinguish it. The theory of the sisters would prove true when Ruby, after noticing a faint violet glow under a tarp, found a piece of grey stone inlaid with glowing purple material, which she assumed to be eridium. "Hey!", she called out. "I think I found it!"

"Really? What's it look like?" Blake asked, seemingly teleporting next to Ruby as another of her holograms faded away. "That… sure looks important." Blake remarked.

"I think this is what they wanted us to find." Let's start moving to the center camp." Ruby suggested, pocketing the strange artifact.

When the four walked behind the brush where Yang had parked the fan boat, they were greeted with the sight of the fan boat. More accurately, they were greeted with a wreckage of it.

"OH COME ON!", Yang yelled, dreading the thought of trudging through the mud again before another realization came to her as she quickly walked to the underside of the boat and pulled out a nondescript box.

"What's that?" Ruby asked.

"A repair kit! All this damage is actually just exterior I think. I just need to patch it up and we can be off again!" Yang exclaimed cheerfully, wasting no time in pulling out the necessary tools. "I'm going to need help though, get over here, Blake!", she ordered, yanking Blake along with her by the wrist.

"Why me?" Blake asked, rubbing her wrist.

"What, you think Ice Queen knows how to fix this?" Yang whispered. "And Rubes is great with guns, but… not that great with any other stuff like this.", she added. "Now come on, I'm not going through the mud again."

Rolling her eyes, Blake grabbed one of the tools in the box and started working on the fan boat with Yang.

"You think we should help them?" Ruby asked as her sister and the ex assassin started horsing around after Yang said something neither Ruby nor Weiss could hear.

"I'm sure they know what they're doing, and… admittedly I wouldn't if I were to help." Weiss confessed.

END OF CHAPTER 13

A/N: So yeah, it's been a while. My bad, but things are picking up in school (have to practice for a parade, aaaaaagh), so you'll probably see less of me.


	14. Shiny, Purple, and Important

Chapter 14: Shiny, Purple, and Important

"So if these guys are telling the truth and there really is another vault here, what should we do with all the loot?" Yang wondered aloud, trying to distract herself from the boredom of driving the fan boat over the empty marshes that were too deep for any creature or savage to bother waiting around in.

"A ticket off this armpit of a planet. Air conditioning is a myth to you all, apparently, all the wildlife tastes like industrial chemicals, I think i almost died at least nine times since I got here and those are from things _besides_ getting shot, and everything just… smells.", Weiss complained, waving her hand in front of her nose to ward off yet another whiff of the swampy odor that dominated the air.

"Got a place in mind? You could stay with me and Ruby if it comes down to it.", Yang offered out of reflex, without thinking on whether or not to make the offer.

"Ruby and _I_ ", Weiss corrected, earning an eye roll from Yang that she couldn't see since the blonde faced forward to drive the fan boat, but assumed to have been earned. "And- wait, I thought you couldn't go home.", Weiss realized, remembering why the sisters were even here in the first place. "How can you come home while Ruby's still-".

"Woah there, Ice Queen. We weren't nearly as badass as we are now when we left, there's no one on that planet that could take us now, not as long as I got these babies.", Yang countered, taking one hand off the steering wheel to point at the miniature Torgue shotguns in their holsters.

"Assuming you don't blow yourself up before anything like that comes up, those are safety hazards and you know it.", Weiss commented,adjusting her grip on the side of the fan boat and pointing at Yang's weapons.

"For the poor sap who thinks he can take me on, yeah, but not for me.", Yang argued, her face breaking out into a cheeky grin. "What do you think, Ruby? Any plans for all the loot we could get?", she called out, not noticing that Ruby had been spacing out, simply taking in the vibrant landscape of Aegrus before her raised voice snapped the younger sister out of her sightseeing.

"Huh? Wuh- oh loot! Right. Uhhh, more stuff for Crescent Rose, I guess. Maybe some strawberries. I miss strawberries…", Ruby trailed off, her stomach grumbling as if to emphasize her point.

"Oh please, I'm sure you treat that rifle well enough.", Weiss commented, perplexed at Ruby's lack of ambition. Weiss was filthy rich once, and if this vault was real and no one was conning her, she'd be filthy rich once again, and she will be damned if she, or the other three hunters don't get to enjoy it.

"Weiss you don't understand! There's no "good enough" for Crescent Rose!", Ruby whined. "They don't make rifles like her anymore and I don't know what I'd do without her! Isn't that right, sweetheart?", Ruby explained, then turned to the rifle slung on her back and petting it like she would a puppy.

"Your sister needs help.", Weiss murmured under her breath.

"Eh, she turned out fine enough.", Yang shrugged, never taking her eyes off the swamp in front of her.

"How about you, Blake? Anything special in mind?", Ruby asked, looking up at the ex assassin who had dozed off in the gunner seat, her face in another book.

"Huh? Oh, loot? I hadn't really planned on getting enough loot to think about it…", Blake admitted, still shaking off her grogginess.

"And here you are looking for an alien vault of value high enough to kill and die for.", Weiss commented.

"Well when you put it like that…, maybe a nice house on one of the quiet planets, other than that, still don't really know." Blake answered. As talented, "ninja like", as the sisters would call her, and ridiculously talented she was with both sword and shot, Blake never relished the rush of adrenaline like Yang did, or appreciated the craftsmanship of a weapon or of a battle plan like Ruby or Weiss, respectively. Her upbringing and perhaps her own natural demeanor just made her tired of it all, but she knew better than to give up. The vault was just what she needed to get off Pandora and onto somewhere where she could live a quiet life without having to slash or shoot her way through the day. Until then, however, she'd use all her skills (and all her holographic decoys) to hunt down this vault.

After a brief lull in conversation, Ruby's ECHO began to ring, showing Jaune's face as she pressed the answer button. "Hey Jaune, did something come up?", Ruby asked.

"Yeah actually, we may have kinda sorta totalled our ride, and we know the fan boats don't hold more than four and it would be a really bad idea to try and fit more, so we're heading back to the lodge to hit that center camp after we get another boat.", Jaune answered, embarrassment and annoyance creeping into his voice.

"It was not my fault!", Nora yelled, an explosion roaring through the ECHO the moment she proclaimed her innocence, followed by a distinct scream Ruby could swear she heard in a bunch of different movies.

"Okay… how about we meet you there?", Ruby offered.

"Sounds like a plan, I don't think we'll be in shape to hit that camp after walking all the way ba- oh come on that was a nice shoe!, Jaune complained as Ruby heard wet noises of what she assumed was Jaune searching through the swamp for his shoe

As Jaune hung up, Ruby's ECHO rang again, showing a picture of Rhys's face.

"Hello?", Ruby greeted.

"Hey! You wouldn't have happened to see two redheads and a blonde in your area have you?", Rhys asked.

"Why? You getting lonely there, little guy?", Yang suggested, her voice dripping with distinct mischievousness, one greater than Yang's usual misbehavior.

"One, I'm taller than you.", Rhys deadpanned, causing Yang to gasp and put a hand to her heart. "Two, no. I'm asking because they broke into my little office and voluntold me to give them the coordinates to Aegrus, so just FYI."

"Oh we know them! Don't worry about it.", Ruby realized, putting two and two together and concluding that the vault hunters Rhys was talking about were Jaune, Pyrrha, Nora, and Ren.

"Alright, just-, oh wait, before I go, find anything good yet? Like i said, if it's shiny and doesn't shoot bullets I could probably use it.", Rhys reminded the four, hopeful for something of value.

"Uh we found something shiny and purple.", Ruby answered.

"Great! Bring it to Fiona, she probably knows what it is, til next time you guys, I think LB wants the ECHO."

"I MUST CALL GORTYS, IT HAS BEEN TOO LONG.", Loader Bot claimed.

"It's been like three hours you ca-", Rhys argued, before Ruby hung up.

"You think he'll tell us who Gortys is?", Ruby wondered aloud.

"It's probably not important. Let's get back to the lodge.", Weiss suggested. "And more importantly, out of all this muck…"

...

"Yang was right, walking does suck.", Jaune complained, having wrestled his shoe from the mud, only find its inside caked with the brown gunk, forcing him to go the rest of the trek with one shoe and one of his favorite rocket ship socks slowly becoming a plain brown sock.

"My apologies, I should have expected that. Nora tends to get… restless.", Ren said, his fingers on his temples as if to soothe a headache.

"I was so bored! You can understand, right Ren?", Nora pleaded.

"Yes, but that doesn't make it okay that you trashed our ride.", Ren replied calmly.

"Moving on…" Pyrrha interjected, wanting to divert the topic that was reminding her of how she could be sitting on a fan boat speeding back to the lodge with their shiny purple trinket, but instead had to walk through hell and (literally) high water instead. "Are you sure about keeping that rifle, Jaune? We've come across quite a few alternatives."

"Nah, this is a family heirloom, my dad used it, and his dad, and his dad before that, and… you get the point. When we go out on the Arc adventure, we always take something special from home, and it usually happens to be this. Plus I value my life so I'm making damn sure this thing comes back home with me.", Jaune declared proudly, carrying the rifle with a little more care and ignoring the _squelch_ of his feet in the mud.

"So Ren, you say you and Nora travel a lot? Got any new stories?", Jaune asked, hoping to kill some time.

"Well it's not exactly an adventure, but there was this one time…", Ren trailed off, thinking of the story.

 _...Hollow Point, Pandora (the town, not the bullet type)_

"Ren can we switch? This guy's gettin kinda heavy", Nora complained, carrying a limp man on one shoulder like she would a sack of potatoes, and her trusty Maghnild on the other as they ambled into the heart of the cavern town.

"You know I'm carrying someone of about the same size, right Nora?", Ren asked.

"Yeah but this guy smells funny.", Nora shot back.

"So does this one.", Ren countered. "We're not far now, we can just leave these with the sheriff and we can do whatever afterwards."

True to Ren's word, the sheriff's office sat near the town entrance, where Ren knocked on the door.

"I'm comin', just a sec!", A gruff voice responded, followed by lazy footsteps and the sound of a key turning a lock. "You got them two rascals that've been throwing around stalker bait?", the sheriff, who failed to even reach Nora's height asked.

"Right here, deputy!" Nora exclaimed, unceremoniously dumping the man on her shoulder onto the splintered, hardwood floor along with Ren, who simply leaned forward and let the man on his shoulder fall off of him.

"Hm, alright then. Lemme get your ten thou.", the sheriff said, turning to a door that lead out of his office.

"Didn't the bounty say twenty?", Ren asked, already sensing Nora's aggression rising at the idea of getting stiffed.

"The bounty said "alive".", the sheriff explained.

"Oh, right! Don't worry, I got this!", Nora replied, crouching, laying out the two men flat on the floor and appearing to carefully plan out something on their knee before she stood up and drove her foot down on one of the men's knees, which heralded a sickening _crunch_.

"FROM HIS MOTHER'S WOMB UNTIMELY RIPPED!", the man yelled, returning to consciousness. "Wait what's goi-oh", the man realized, staring up at the sheriff and the two bounty hunters sent after him and his friend before hearing the _click_ of handcuffs.

"You are under arrest for disturbing the peace, endangering the pub-blah blah blah, you know what you did. Now you two.", he finished, pointing to the remaining man on the floor. "He alive?"

"Of course he is!" Nora said, repeating the same procedure he had done with the first man, only for him to remain inert. Nora brought down her foot again. Again, no reaction. Three stomps later and the man had still not awoken.

"Okay..., can we get fifteen thousand then?", Ren asked.

"Uh actually nevermind, you'll get your twenty thou, don't worry.", the sheriff replied hastily, having gotten a bad feeling about the short ginger who was stomping on a corpse.

"Holy crap, whatsyourface! You killed him!", the handcuffed man exclaimed.

"And?", Nora asked, unaware of the point the man was trying to make.

"NOOOOOOOO-", the man yelled as the sheriff carted him off.

"And that's why Nora and I check _before_ we turn them in now.", Ren finished.

The hush that fell over the group as he told his story remained, Jaune and Pyrrha having shocked looks on their faces and staring at Nora.

"What? How else do I check if they're alive?" Nora asked defensively.

"I.. uh… nevermind.", Jaune stammered, deciding not to bother himself with Nora's past hijinks.

...

"So you're telling me you're riding with a Lance assassin and the daughter of an Atlas board member? Next thing your're gonna tell me is that you've got a dragon boyfriend, I swear.", Ruby and Yang's father, Taiyang, deadpanned over the ECHO.

"Daaaad, I'm serious! You've heard them in the background.", Ruby whined. "Here! I'll pass the ECHO to them so they can tell you.", she declared, first handing the ECHO to Weiss. "Your daughter is right, Weiss Schnee, at your service Mister Xiao Long.", the ex heiress said.

"Oh please, just call me Taiyang. I feel old enough when I look in the mirror already.", Taiyang joked. "How you getting along with my girls? Well I hope, I know they're a handful, but they mean well."

"Well, we worked it out...", Weiss answered vaguely. "I'm going to pass the ECHO to another of our friends, okay?", Weiss informed Taiyang.

"Alright, this is Blake, I assume.", Taiyang said, unable to actually see anyone through the ECHO.

"That would be me, yes.", Blake replied tersely.

"Well good to know my daughters are in good company.", Taiyang said happily. "You four get to do anything fun?"

"We're looking for one of the new vaults the Crimson Raiders found with that map from the second vault", Ruby explained. "We met another set of vault hunters and it's really been fun.

"A vault?! I thought those were all just full of tentacles and disappointment.", Taiyang commented.

"The last few ones throughout the galaxy have been full of good stuff, I'm hoping this one will be the same.", Ruby said.

"Yeah and we've been kicking tons of butt!", Yang exclaimed.

"Huh, well that goes to show how well I keep up with the merc business now.", Taiyang joked. "Alright then, it was nice to hear from you girls, love you!"

"Love you too, dad!", both Ruby and Yang exclaimed.

"Your family is certainly interesting.", Blake commented, "your uncle is the most responsible alcoholic I've met, and your father is... he's an odd one."

"Yeah he's just kind of like that.", Yang shrugged, continuing to drive the fan boat. "He just kinda-oh, wait, LAND HO!", she yelled, catching sight of the lodge.

...

"Oh hey, you're not dead.", Fiona remarked curtly, looking at the four vault hunters standing in front of the lodge. "That's more than I can say for half the other idiots after this vault."

"She mean's "hi". That's how she says "hi".", Sasha added, poking her head out the doorway.

"Yep! And we found something too! It's shiny and purple and more than just a block of eridium, so I think this is what we're looking for!", Ruby replied, fishing around in her pack for the artifact before holding it in open palms so Fiona and Sasha could get a good look at it.

"Well I'll be damned.", Fiona said in amazement at first glance before taking another look at the mysterious fragment. "Wait… oh for…", she cursed, her face in her palm. "Before I go on, promise that you won't shoot me.", she requested, her voice sinking in embarrassment along with her hat, which seemed to lower itself over her face to hide it.

"Uh, okay." Ruby agreed.

"Fine", Weiss said.

"Alright.", Blake agreed

"Well I won't _shoot_ you, but…", Yang trailed off, cracking her knuckles and allowing the implication to fill in the rest.

"Okay, this is a fake vault key piece.", Fiona announced.

END OF CHAPTER 14


	15. Meet your Bro's Bro

Chapter 15: Meeting your bro's bro.

"Huh?", Ruby asked, unsure if her ears had started playing tricks on her while the other three vault hunters stood speechless.

"I recognize it, I used it for a con a long time ago. I don't know how it got all the way here but it's more fake than Santa and I can tell from looking at it.", Fiona admitted, her face hidden and voice muffled behind her hat and her palm, respectively.

"Wait You mean Santa's-mmph!", Ruby tried to say before Yang clamped a hand over her mouth and leaned to whisper in her ear.

"Ahh heh heh", Yang stammered before leaning to whisper "you didn't hear that", in Ruby's ear. "So you're telling me that I walked through at least five miles of mud for a purple rock that's not even from an alien?", she asked.

"Yes", Fiona sighed. "I don't feel any better about it than you, okay? All that stalking and holing up here, all for nothing.", she said, cracking open a mini fridge and pulling out a nondescript green bottle before a white and pink shoe kicked one of the side doors open.

"We're baaack!", Nora yelled, followed by Ren, Pyrrha, and Jaune minus one shoe and plus one ruined sock.

"Oh, uh, hi. Sorry, you four but I got some bad news, the artifacts I sent you all four to get are fakes."

Jaune, initially not hearing the news, said "Uh well our boat sort of broke down and wait what? It's a fake?"

Fiona, sick of verbalizing the predicament, simply nodded, taking another swig out of the green bottle.

"So… yeah, sorry about that.", Sasha said sheepishly, putting up her hands.

"There's worse times to find that out, I guess", Ruby replied. "Can't you call up Rhys?", she asked.

Fiona, straightening her hat and taking a deep breath, answered. "Yeah, but he's not the one with the info on the key, his "bro" Vaughn is with Gortys, who can actually find anything vault related but he hasn't been picking up recently. We could kill two birds with one stone and send you over to check up on the two. I know Loader Bot probably wants to, but Rhys still can't fight worth crap, so he's kind of stuck.

"Hmm." Ren wondered aloud, seeing Nora plead to him through facial expressions alone. "We'll come to that later. The locals have actually given us a contract to hunt some rare game. And Nora is being rather… insistent", Ren announced, earning a cheer from Nora.

"Maybe then I can hit something," Jaune grumbled to himself.

"Oh don't worry, you're improving", Pyrrha assured him, as the four walked around the lodge to take stock of their gear for the day.

"So you think the car is still there?", Yang asked her three friends.

…..

"What should I be looking for again?", Yang inquired through the ECHO, her eyes on the dusty broken roads again.

"A big wreckage, it used to be the big "H" space station that flew over this planet but it crashed a while back, Vaughn's been using it as his base of operations of sorts along with Gortys. Like I said, he hasn't been picking up any calls lately, so you check up on him, okay?", Fiona informed the four.

"Right, let's just hope he just accidentally left it on silent or something.", Yang replied jokingly before a _click_ signaled that Fiona had ended the call, and soon after the ECHO buzzed again, showing a picture of Rhys.

"Hello?", Ruby said, answering the call.

"Hey again, Fiona told me you were going to visit my bro Vaughn and I thought I'd let you know a few key things. Don't worry about the red dots, those are just laser pointers Vaughn's guys use to scare people off, and if anyone asks, tell em I sent you. And of course you'll need his number, maybe his signal crapped out so you try calling him when you get around his base", Rhys instructed. "And uh… he's a pretty polite guy, he won't get offended if you tell him to put a shirt on."

"And please tell Gortys I said hi. Absence is making the robotic equivalent of a heart grow fonder.", Loader bot requested, before the four vault hunters could hear another scuffle over the ECHO and some static.

"Why don't they just all work in the same place?", Weiss wondered, failing to see the necessity of these informants splitting themselves up.

"A precaution I'm sure. None of them sound too well versed in actual fighting, so it's best not to put themselves all in one spot if anyone finds them out", Blake reasoned. "Really they're strange. Who goes to Pandora without a gun? Or twenty?"

"You, for one, I've only seen you actually shoot to fling your sword around", Weiss pointed out.

"...Fair enough, you get my point though.", Blake conceded, looking out towards the cracked land ahead.

"You would think a crashed space station would stand out more.", Ruby complained, leaning her head back, her negligible attention span suffering from the vast expanse of nothing they were traversing and apparently still nowhere near this "Vaughn's" base of operations.

"Well there's this game we can play…", Yang offered, a grin on her face.

…...

"Yeah… no, not even for a million dollars", Weiss said, a blush forming on her cheeks as she shuddered.

"Really? I'd do it for half a million!", Yang exclaimed.

"Yeah I don't see the problem, I'd do it too.", Ruby added, earning a shocked stare from Blake and Weiss as and some poorly hidden chuckles from Yang.

"What?", she questioned.

"I… uh…", Blake trailed off, stunned at Ruby's innocence (or possibly lack thereof, given her answer), "...nothing", she finally said, still a bit stunned.

Yang still grinning from Ruby's response, squinted to see past the dust blowing through the bright Pandoran sun. Just as she was about to give up, she saw the end of a mass of twisted metal, almost like it belonged to… a wreckage! "Ruby, get on the ECHO and call the number Rhys gave us, i think we're here."

"Finally! I was starting to get _really bored_.", the short sniper commented as she fiddled with the ECHO device before hearing a click that confirmed a connection was established. "Hello? Is Vaughn here?"

"Who is this?", a voice that sounded more used to pencil pushing than having anything to do with Pandora asked. "Who sent you?"

"Your "bro" Rhys, he told us that he couldn't get ahold of you." ,Ruby explained as the technical Yang was driving approached the massive wreckage.

"Oh, right, yeah I'm Vaughn, I've been in better spots, actually. We're getting sieged by bandits and they shot out a fuse box, so our signal is kind of shot.",

"Why are they still there? Are you out of ammo?", Ruby asked.

"Uh, yeah, about that. I don't know if Rhys told you, but I lead a pacifist group here, we don't _have_ guns.", Vaughn explained. "So we've been kind of sort of pinned down for a while and they're either real brave or real stupid, because the laser pointers didn't work."

"This guy is on Pandora…. And he, and everyone he leads is a pacifist… without guns… on _Pandora_.", Blake said, trying to rationalize how anyone could possibly survive for so long under such conditions.

"Hey, I can hear you, and until now we've been doing just fine, but now we could use a hand.", Vaughn replied.

"Okay… We'll get on it", Blake assures the man, before the call ended. "How does he function?", she said to no one in particular.

"Eh, not our problem.", Yang replied, not particularly interested in how a group of pacifists survived on Pandora compared to an excuse to get into another fight. "Let's body some fools!", she exclaimed, parking the technical behind a rock and jumping out of the driver seat, Ember Celica ready for battle.

"I don't know what she just said and now I feel older.", Weiss lamented, checking Myrtenaster's chambers as she left the technical to follow Yang with Blake and Ruby not far behind.

"Okay Vaughn, we can't see any of the bandits that well right now, do you think you can call out anything out unusual?", Ruby asked through the ECHO, unable to distinguish between the bandits in the distance even through her scope.

"There are… no psychos at all. I count a… a lot of nomads and bruisers, a few rocket goliaths and… wait hold on, there's some… guy in a suit?… it looks like he's the leader, he's just pointing at stuff. Try taking out the suit first once you see him.", Vaughn suggested, before a shot rang out. "I think they're getting bored, hurry up!", he pleaded, before ending the call.

The four vault hunters advanced towards the wreckage, the dust covering their approach, but also the numbers of the bandits. They knew from Vaughn they would mainly be facing the sluggish nomads and bruisers, so close range with so many would be a delicate affair.

"Well that's just great. How am I supposed to deal with a _swarm_ of nomads?" Weiss complained, throwing up her hands and glowering at Myrtenaster, which, as effective as it was, was subject to Maliwan's odd obsession with woefully limited ammo capacities.

"Hmm… oh! I know! Weiss, put up a launchy glyph!", Ruby suggested.

"A what?", the ex heiress asked, having never heard of the word before.

"The one you use to launch stuff.", Ruby clarified, taking aim with her rifle. "This'll be just the boost I need."

"...I'll do you one better.", Weiss replied after forming the glyph, a smirk on her face as she fired off a shot from her pistol-turned-rapier that seemed to strike the glyph and cause it to surge with electricity. "These seem to be smarter than the average brute, so they probably have a shield. Just call out the element and I can switch the glyph.", Weiss explained.

"Alright! Yang, Blake, make some trouble and find that suit!", Ruby commanded, pointing at the mass of bandits dramatically.

Yang, who was raring to go the whole time, sprinted forward.

"And so I told him "That'll never be canon an-" AUGH!", a bruiser yelled, having been placed on the receiving end of a running sucker punch from Yang, her fist and a blast from the Torgue shotgun on her wrist quickly dispatching the burly bandit. Making the most out of the element of surprise, she dove forward past the nomad who stood near the late bruiser and struck his back with her elbow before slugging his face as he turned around. Having successfully caught the attention of the horde, Yang grinned as Blake seemed to strike from thin air, launching Gambol Shroud around one heavy nomad's ankle and pulling him to the ground with a strong yank. Not a moment after the nomad's face hit the dirt, the sharp report of Crescent Rose made itself known as a bullet, accelerated by Weiss's glyph and charged with electricity, hit home in the side of the fallen nomad's head.

From there the battle went as battles usually went save for Weiss assisting Ruby's shots until Blake saw a distinct gleam in the distance, leaving a holographic decoy in response and rushing to tackle Yang into an unexpected trajectory. "Sniper!", she yelled, her ECHO active to notify Ruby and Weiss. Her suspicions proven when a loud _crack_ echoed through the barren land in front of the wreckage and pile of loose gravel and dirt shot up in the spot Yang stood a moment before. Taking the hint, Yang ran, trying to zig-zag her path to cover while Blake simply left another decoy and snuck off to the same rock. When Blake was sufficiently covered, she turned to see Yang panting and patting herself down as if to check for wounds.

"You think Ruby's got it?", Blake asked, as bullets whizzed past the rock as she chucked one of her grenades over the rock to deter the bandits.

"I'm sure she does, just a matter of time.", Yang replied.

"And also a matter of finding where he is. Can you remember where you saw him?", Weiss asked over the ECHO.

"To the left on the high ground. Pretty far away though, we're going to have to draw him out or wait for the sun to hit his scope right again.", Blake answered.

"Well I hate waiting. Ugh, if only I had a hat or something to throw out.", Yang groused. "Maybe if I move fast enough he'll miss again."

"Yang, no.", Blake said flatly.

"Yang, yes!", she replied flippantly. "What's life without a little risk? We're vault hunters, that's as risky as it gets."

"There's risk, and there's being stupid, maybe if… okay, I have a bad idea.", Blake announced, pulling out a book from seemingly nowhere, which conveniently had a beige colored cover. "Do you have a marker or something?", she asked, holding out her hand for the tool.

"Yeah, actually.", Yang said, rooting through her pockets and pulling out a black permanent marker, which Blake used to draw something that roughly resembled a hairline. Her decoy finished, she held up the book…

And it nearly flew from her hands due to the force of the sniper's shot, exactly what Blake wanted him to do, as Ruby, looking in the sniper's general direction, saw the muzzle flash and quickly fired off two shots and a rifle fell off the elevated ground signalling Ruby's success.

"Two?", Weiss asked, having seen Ruby only fire one shot for a target most of the time.

"Rule number two: double tap", Ruby replied, a satisfied smile on her face as she carefully slotted another magazine into her rifle. "The sniper's down, you two!", Ruby called out over the ECHO.

With the major threat out of commission, the usual battle plan won out, Blake and Yang outmaneuvering or overpowering the bandits, respectively while Ruby moved up closer to use her rifle without help from Weiss's glyphs while Weiss herself skirted around the fight, supporting Yang with her glyphs and catching the odd straggler or two. With another horde of bandits down, the four regrouped to check for wounds and gear, as was custom after a fight.

….

Expensive shoes strolled through the battlefield, the man's immaculate white suit, somehow untarnished by the sun and dust of Pandora as he surveyed the chaos, a cane, more for appearance than for physical need in hand as he took a drag from his cigar with his other hand, sighing to himself.

"One day, I'll get my money's worth.", the man said wistfully, looking at the mass of dead or incapacitated bandits. He shouldn't really be surprised, he told himself. They weren't kidding when they said Pandora was the black sheep planet of the galaxy, a lawless, dirty, rock full of ne'er do wells and with literacy about as prolific as air conditioning. But the man could overlook that, for a vault at least. When he saw the flickering image of a woman in black successfully fool his hirelings and the sniper (who he presumed to be the brightest of the bunch, though this being Pandora, that didn't mean much) fall dead from his vantage point, he knew his goons were outmatched, which, with their numbers, would be the work of more than garden variety mercenaries. "Yep," he thought. "This is definitely a little group of vault hunters, but what's a job without some complication? I guess I'll have just to put these upstarts in the dirt", he surmised aloud to no one in particular

…..

"What do you mean we're taking him alive?". Ruby asked in disbelief, the suited man in her sights as Weiss called her off.

"He could know something about the vault, why else would he bother sieging a wreckage like it's some kind of fortress instead of running it down?", Weiss explained.

"But he's that bandit leader from the other day! We could take him down now for making us sleep late.", Ruby countered.

"Are you really that petty?", Weiss inquired, an eyebrow raised.

"Maybe…", Ruby answered.

"Regardless, he might know something we don't, it's in our best interests that his insides stay… inside", Weiss argued.

"Fine I'll go for his leg", Ruby conceded, firing a shot.

The shot did indeed land in the man's leg, but there was no loud cursing, no doubling over in pain from the man. Instead, his visage shattered like glass, and he reappeared walking off in the distance along with a shorter woman, whose head looked pink on one side and brown on the other. Deciding to try again, Ruby fired another shot, only for the two to shatter again and reappear even further away.

Setting aside her confusion for later, Ruby activated her ECHO. "All clear out here Vaughn, we're coming in.", Ruby announced.

"Oh you got em all? Cool. Actually I'll come out and meet you, don't wanna be a rude host, you know?", Vaughn replied as the call ended.

"Shouldn't we check if they dropped anything good?", Yang asked, referring to the multitude of bandits sprawled around the dusty field.

END OF CHAPTER 15

A/N: Sorry, no excuses this time. I'm just running out of steam and I dont want to put out something thats rushed and sucky.


	16. Getting a Clue (Attempt 2)

Chapter 16: Getting a Clue (Attempt #2)

After the process of frisking the assorted bodies that surrounded the crashed space station, the four adventurers walked towards the path laid out by the number of vandalized Handsome Jack statues to see a man with the face of a corporate pencil pusher complete with glasses and the physique of… not a corporate pencil pusher. Corporate pencil pushers did _not_ have six packs, for example.

"Welcome to the home of the Children of Helios!", Vaughn exclaimed, his arms open in greeting. "What did my bro send you for?"

"We were looking for more on the Vault of the Hunter and Rhys told us you were with someone named Gortys who had all the actual information and he sent us to get an update, also because you weren't picking up on your ECHO… for reasons that we can tell them now", Ruby explained, looking over to the shot up communication tower,

"Well good timing with that, I don't know how long it would have been before those bandits started getting antsy. Now normally I'm supposed to get rid of you somehow if you mention Gortys.."

"We're certified badasses, you're gonna have a hard time with that.", Yang shot back, hand hovering over one of her shotguns.

"Woah now, I said normally. This isn't normally, and by "get rid of" I did _not_ mean kill. You all know of Gortys already, so how about we just go and meet her already okay?", Vaughn said hastily.

"Lead the way.", Ruby encouraged, shooting a look at Yang to call her off.

…

Now inside the wreckage, the four vault hunters received the greetings of people who looked a lot like Vaughn, corporate workers in over their heads, but they seemed pleasant enough.

"So what's the deal with this place? And why no guns?", Ruby asked, darting around to gawk at random pieces of the wreckage interior.

"Well these guys, don't tell them by the way, suck at just about everything. It took way less convincing to make this workable than it would have to make regular huts or whatever, plus we're in the middle of nowhere with no ride out so we'd run out of ammo anyway.", Vaughn explained. "We're basically camping out here and using whatever didn't get wrecked in the crash."

"There doesn't happen to be anything we can help with, is there?", Ruby inquired, craning her head over Vaughn's shoulder.

"Yeah but there isn't a whole lot we have to offer in exchange, unless you like giant Handsome Jack heads", Vaughn offered, gesturing behind him.

"That's fine, we got time", Ruby replied, a little smile on her face.

"Wait… actually there is something. Ever heard of a grinder?"

"Lots of things have a grinder, you'll need to be a little more specific", Weiss requested in confusion.

"For guns and gear and stuff. Turns out Hyperion was messing around with the tech too. Wasn't enough for them to have a big stake in E-Tech. There's one here, but it's missing some parts and we could use it for general salvage, so here is a shopping list.", Vaughn said, handing Ruby a scrap of paper with rough sketches of parts needed to get the grinder working again. "Or if any of you four are particularly handy you might be able to fix this with what we have lying around. Either way once it's done you can throw junk in it and get something that's less.. Er… junky", Vaughn explained. "And some parts to fix the comm tower while you're at it."

"Ooooh. Deal.", Ruby quickly replied, already fawning over the idea of more high quality equipment.

"I could use a better shield…", Weiss muttered. Her spike shield had served her well, but being groomed to be another corporate cutthroat had instilled within her an appreciation for good gear, even if it took a little work, which, having lived on Pandora for longer than a week, would likely be trivial in comparison.

"Never hurts to keep gear updated.", Blake agreed. Gambol Shroud was no slouch, sure, and neither was that Bee shield Ruby found for her, but like any self respecting vault hunter, loot was the second best news to the former Lance Assassin besides not getting shot.

"Hey something else I'm good at! I'm down for some mechanical work", Yang offered, considering herself well versed in mechanics from working on the various stolen cars she drove around Pandora as well as her bike Bumblebee, which she had sadly forgotten at home.

"Alright, well you'll all get to grinding as soon as you get what you came for, don't wanna keep you waiting.", Vaughn said, continuing to lead the four deeper into his base of operations.

The random strangers, presumably under Vaughn's leadership, began to appear fewer and farther between as the former salaryman lead the four to the deeper parts of the wreckage and into what used to be a computer room, a few monitors with code and random characters blazing across the screen, some stuck on the still existent blue screen of death, and in the middle of it all a small robot whose face took the form of a set of eyes and the top of the orb that comprised its body tapping away at assorted keyboards and making noises that indicated it was concentrating.

"Uhh, Gortys is this a bad time?", Vaughn asked the little robot, which prompted her to turn around and face him and the four vault hunters.

"No, not at all! Especially not when there's four new people to meet! I am the Gortys project, or Gortys. I help Vaughn and his friends out with finding the vault! Who are you four?", Gortys asked cheerfully.

"Vault hunters, and good ones at that.", Yang replied boastfully.

"Except that we haven't _found_ a vault yet.", Blake mumbled, loud enough that only Yang could hear.

"Hey remember what Sasha said? Most of em don't get past the station the train or bus or whatever drops em off on, I think we're above average at least.", Yang countered, that proud grin still on her face, earning an amused eye roll from the black haired assassin-turned-mercenary.

"Well in any case, I bet you're here with Vaughn because you're after the vault like he and his friends are, but it's weird, the readings I'm picking up are just all over Aegrus. If I were to guess, the entire region must be involved in it somehow, but it's hard to tell just from the Eridium readings and other data I can get.", Gortys explained, one hand behind her head. "I really wish I could find out more, but I'm drawing a blank", she added, a forlorn look on her face.

"Hey don't worry, we all know you're trying your hardest, even when you were only designed to look for one specific vault you've been doing great.", Vaughn said, kneeling down to bring his face closer to Gortys as he tried to encourage her.

"The entire region… might be useful… but what do you mean by designed to look for a vault?", Blake asked, eyeing the familiar red and white color scheme of Gortys.

"Oh, right. See Gortys here was a last ditch effort from Atlas to find a vault, in fact they had one specific vault in mind, but some of the programs work for just finding stuff in general, also Loader Bot is kind of attached…", Vaughn explained.

"Awww, that's so cute!", Ruby shouted.

"Yeah, but it's kind of annoying for Rhys. He still needs LB near him for security sake and Loader Bot does not deal with it well.", Vaughn replied, an amused smirk on his face. "Alright, I've spent more than enough of your time, you four go and tell Rhys that I'm not dead, or fix the comm tower so I can tell him myself, good seeing you!", Vaughn called out as the four left the computer room to get to their new tasks.

…

 _Meanwhile, in Aegrus….._

"Ugh, remind me to _never_ stand near a slag spore again", Jaune requested, now missing his hoodie, having abandoned it when a slagged spore they had been paid to hunt exploded all over him, soaking his jacket in the foul purple stuff and making Pyrrha act weird when Jaune had to strip down to his undershirt to get away from the stench.

"In fairness, I didn't see you until it already died.", Ren answered evenly.

"That's fine, but... bleh i think there's still some in my mouth", Jaune realized, trying to spit out the offensive chemical.

"Oh don't be a baby! Slag is an acquired taste", Nora declared with an exaggerated posh accent.

"Well we're just having a hard time with it, okay Nora?", Jaune replied in annoyance.

"Just give it little it'll grow on you.", Nora said confidently.

"I hope you don't mean that literally", Jaune murmured, shuddering at the thought.

"Either way that's one down… oh, a lot to go", Ren realized, as he checked the list of rare creatures the unusually amicable Aegran native gave him and found the slagged spore to be only the second item on the list.

"Let us advance! I AM NOT SATED!", Nora yelled, sprinting past her three friends, grenade launcher in hand.

"...Has she always been like this?", Jaune asked, pointing at Nora.

"Basically. You get used to it", Ren answered.

"Over how long?", Pyrrha inquired.

"Long enough."

The pained roars of another specimen of Aegran wildlife and maniacal laughter abruptly ended the conversation as the three vault hunters rushed to the aid of their more enthusiastic companion.

…

"So", Ruby began, looking at the note Vaughn gave her while riding shotgun in the technical. "We need an unassembler linkage, a recombiner matrix, and a few feet of wire."

"That might be hard, given the way he talked about the parts they don't sound easy to… come… by.", Blake trailed off, seeing a bandit technical in the distance speeding along with the exact same parts shown on Vaughn's note.

"Over there! Step on it!", Blake yelled, pointing in the technical's general direction, prompting Yang to hit the boost to catch up to the technical.

…..

"Pfffhahahha, no way. They don't go together at all, Davy", Larry proclaimed, one hand on the wheel, the other on his friend's shoulder. "If anyone ends up together, it'll be-"

"Oh you shut it!", Davy yelled. "They deserve each other and- hey wait. Do you hear that?"

"Hear what?", Larry asked, an eyebrow raised behind his mask.

"I might just be hearing things but I think we're being followed.", Davy said, worry creeping into his voice

"Well what are you gonna do about it? Johnny! Check our six!" Larry ordered.

"Yeah yeah, you ain't my supervisor", Johnny drawled, turning the gunner seat around to check behind him. "It's probably just another rakk or some shi-nevermind we're being followed.", Johnny declared, starting to use the sawblade launcher in hope of scaring off the unknown technical.

"Dammit I knew cargoing these parts was a bad idea, don't just sit there, lose em!" Davy shouted at Larry, who tried to zigzag his path and steer the technical as erratically as possible.

"What you think I'm trying to do? Make ya hurl?", Larry shot back.

"Yeah I think you are!", Davy complained, holding onto the dashboard with one hand and covering his mouth with the other.

….

"Well now they're definitely on to us", Yang said as she dodged another sawblade in pursuit of the technical.

"Can you get us in close?", Blake asked, looking over to Yang from her spot in the gunner seat.

"Not til the boost is ready to go again, why you asking?", Yang replied, swerving to narrowly dodge another sawblade.

"Just need to make sure.", Blake explained, preparing herself to jump off her seat.

"I'll try to slow em down!", Ruby called, getting out her rifle and trying to take out the tires. However, as naturally talented as she was, trying to hit a moving target while driving through dust clouds on rough bumpy dunes proved to be a significant challenge, as the most she was able to hit was a tail light. Grumbling in frustration, Ruby decided to fire off one more shot before putting up Crescent Rose, which ended up blowing out a rear tire.

"Nice shot, sis!", Yang exclaimed, noticing the technical ahead driving notably slower and less stable. "Alright everyone, hold onto your butts in 3.. 2…. 1!", she yelled, hitting the boost button and sending the technical rocketing forward.

…

"Holy crap they're gaining on us! Hit the boost!", Johnny yelled.

"I can't! We burned it out last week remember?", Larry answered.

"WHY DIDN'T WE FIX IT?" Davy complained.

"BECAUSE SOMEONE DECIDED THAT ARGUING WHY THEIR TRASH SHIP ISN'T TRASH IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN FIXING THE GODDAMN BOOSTERS!", Larry screamed, panic and rage in his voice.

"GAME OVER MAN! GAME OVER!" Johnny yelled, hands to his face.

"Wait! If we just lose the parts they won't go after us!" Larry exclaimed.

"What?! Then boss'll kill us!" Davy protested.

"We can figure that out later, if we don't drop the parts, _they'll_ kill us!" Larry countered, jerking a thumb behind him to indicate the technical behind them.

"Aw fine, just a sec", Davy conceded, pulling out a knife and cutting at the straps that held the parts to the technical.

…

"Hold on, one of them is getting out.", Blake said, squinting forward. "He's… cutting the parts off! Yang look out!", she exclaimed, as two heavy chunks of metal came tumbling in their direction.

Hearing Blake's warning and then seeing the parts, Yang swerved around, the two pieces of the grinder narrowly smashing into the side of the technical as they came to a stop.

"Huh, well that makes things easier.", Weiss commented, walking out to pick up the two parts needed for the grinder.

"So what do we have on the vault again?", Ruby asked, scratching her head.

"Something about it involving the entire region, maybe there's some sort of event we need to set off to find it.", Blake answered.

"Oh, okay. That doesn't really narrow it down though…", Ruby said.

"It's better than nothing", Blake shrugged.

…

"Wow, you all got back sooner than I thought", Vaughn commented.

"And with your parts!", Ruby replied.

"Alright, great! Let's see, this looks like it goes here and this…", Vaughn trailed off, placing the parts in their respective places and flicking a switch, followed by a feminine synthetic voice dripping with false cheer and politeness saying "Hyperion grinder ready for use! Please insert three items to be ground."

"I think that means it's working. Do you have the wire?" Vaughn asked.

"No, but there's enough here to jury rig it", Yang answered. "Can I get back to you on that, though?", she asked, looking to the grinder.

"Yeah, that's cool, just let me know when you're done.". Vaughn said, walking out of the room where the grinder was.

"Alright, since I have the least amount of things to grind, I'll use it last. As for the rest of you, I'm thinking of a number between one and one hundred", Yang said.

"Uhh, seventy six", Ruby said

"Seventy seven", Weiss answered

"Seventy", Blake added.

"It was sixty nine! Weiss don't look at me like that", Yang joked. "So Blake, Ruby, Weiss, then me", Yang declared.

Without another word, Blake threw three pieces of assorted unnotable pieces of gear into the grinder. After a few seconds of whirring and clanging, the tray on the bottom of the machine opened up to reveal a Torgue pistol with worn red and silver finish and a short, boxy barrel. "Crude, but effective", Blake commented, adding the pistol to her inventory.

Up next was Ruby, who also dumped some unwanted gear into the grinder, which it processed into a Vladof absorption shield with a blue core. "Yes!", she exclaimed, switching out her old stock Tediore shield for the new one. "I don't know what anyone is talking about with diamonds, but ammo is a girl's best friend!".

Then came Weiss, who followed the actions of Ruby and Blake, and for her offering received a Vladof "spinigun", with its standard wood finish. Grumbling to herself, she stepped out of the way to let Yang have her turn.

After throwing in three pieces of gear, Yang was rewarded with a Torgue pistol with a distinct black and yellow finish.

"Yang, that's…", Ruby trailed off, her eyes wide in wonder

"The Unkempt Harold! Sweet! I thought these things only existed in catalogs!" Yang exclaimed.

Weiss, cursing her luck, threw a few more pieces of unwanted gear into the grinder…

END OF CHAPTER 16

A/N: Oh Weiss, RNG is a cruel mistress indeed.


	17. Sidetracked

Chapter 17: Sidetracked

"Weiss, come on. The grinder isn't going anywhere. We can use it some other time.", Ruby whined, childishly tugging the white haired girl's arm as she threw another set of gear into the machine.

"Not until it gives me something useful.", Weiss declared, frowning at the machine's lack of cooperation as its bottom tray opened to reveal yet another shoddy bandit made submachinegun.

"I was going to suggest poker night, but.." Yang trailed off, seeing Weiss's rocky relationship with lady luck.

"Rrrrgh!", she seethed. "Fine, just let me… calm down…. And… there.", Weiss said, shaking her head to dispel any more ill will directed at the accursed contraption. "What did you have in mind?", she asked.

"Uhh, since the trail has kinda gone cold I was thinking we could take a break and do side jobs", Ruby suggested, pulling out her ECHO, which had notes for all the side jobs available. "We could help Jaune and his friends with hunting rare creatures in Aegrus."

"Next", Yang groaned, far from eager to trudge through the mud again.

"We can… meet with Oobleck at Newer Haven and help him with one of his expeditions."

"Maybe…", Yang noted.

"There's a job from… Torgue?..", Ruby read from her ECHO "Weird, I don't remember where I picked this up. There's a message attached too.", she commented, pressing a button on her ECHO to play the message.

...and immediately recoiled as the ECHO device screamed out the message as loud as it possibly could before Ruby's hand shot towards the volume dial to bring it down to a bearable level.

"GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD MORNING LISTENER! IS IT MORNING WHERE YOU'RE LISTENING TO THIS?! ACTUALLY DON'T ANSWER THAT QUESTION IT'S NOT IMPORTANT FOR SH***. I BET YOU'RE LISTENING AND WONDERING: "WHY THE F*** IS THIS MIRACULOUSLY MUSCULAR MUSTACHIOED SPECIMEN OF MASCULINITY YELLING AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS AND TRANSMITTING IT TO PANDORA?!" GOOOOOD QUESTION! I AM MISTER TORGUE HIGH FIVE FLEXINGTON, AND I HAVE A JOOOOOOOOOOB MOTHERF*****! WELL, _I_ DON'T HAVE A JOB, I GOT FIRED! PROBLEM IS, MY COMPANY IS IN THE S****** WITHOUT ME, WHICH, HUUUUUGE SHOCK, KIND OF HAPPENS WHEN THEY FIRE THEIR **FOUNDER AND HEAD DESIGNER OF ALL THEIR F****** WEAPONS!** SO IT'S UP TO ME TO BAIL THEIR DUMB ASSES OUT OF THE MESS THEY GOT THEMSELVES INTO, AND WHAT BETTER WAY TO DO IT THAN BY HIRING THE BADASSES OF PANDORA AM I RIGHT?! I COULD HAVE GONE TO LITERALLY ANY OTHER PLANET AND ITS GAGGLE OF MERCENARIES, BUT I CHOSE YOU, PANDORA! AND NOT BECAUSE THIS IS STRAIGHT UP ILLEGAL, NOPE, NOT BECAUSE OF THAT, BUT BECAUSE I HAD A GREAT TIME WITH MY TOURNAMENT AT THE BADASS CRATER OF BADASSITUDE!

"Is he just gonna keep yelling or does he actually have a job?", Blake deadpanned, growing tired of the incessant yelling.

"BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME, THIS BROADCAST IS ABOUT YOU, FACELESS LISTENER! YOU'VE LISTENED UP TO THIS POINT BECAUSE YOU WANT TO KICK ASS AND GET PAID, **WHICH IS SOMETHING I FIND HIGHLY RESPECTABLE!** SO I AM ASKING YOU TO HELP THE TORGUE CORPORATION GET BACK ON ITS FEET AND CONTINUE ITS RIGHTEOUS DUTY OF MAKING **EXPLOSIONS!** HOW? GETTING SOME GROUND IS A GREAT START! HEAD ON DOWN TO THE BADASS CRATER OF BADASSITUDE AND CLEAR OUT THE CRAP SO I CAN MAKE IT A FUNCTIONING TORGUE FACILITY AGAIN! SOUND GOOD? OF COURSE IT DOES, I WILL PAY YOU! TOODLES!", the broadcast ended, after which Ruby looked towards her three companions. "That sounds fun doesn't it?", Ruby suggested.

"Crass as they may be, being owed a favor by a corporation is… oooh. I like it.", Weiss declared, rubbing her hands together with a greedy grin on her face. "I'm in."

"It's not a bad idea, but what about the vault? We could be picking up more clues about it and this sounds like it'll take a while", Blake argued.

"Well the guy sounded like he was high up, I'm sure he'll pay us plenty and we can have an easier time with the vault afterward.", Ruby countered. "If a robot designed for looking for vaults hasn't found it I don't think anyone else will beat us to it.", she elaborated.

"You do have a point, but if someone gets a head start on the vault I reserve the right to say 'I told you so'", Blake conceded, earning a shrug from Ruby.

"Well it's a good thing I was for this at the start, looks like we're all in, right?", Yang commented.

"Yup, now where's the fast travel station around here?", Ruby muttered to herself.

…..

Meanwhile in Aegrus, Jaune, Nora, Pyrrha, and Ren had listened to the exact same broadcast while in the middle of taking down an especially large pink borok which was on the list of rare creatures to hunt, its pained roars punctuated with a sharp downward thrust of Pyrrha's spear into its skull.

"WE CAN HELP MISTER TORGUE! WE HAVE TO GO WE HAVE TO GO WE HAVE TO GO WE HAVE TO GO!", Nora yelled, getting on her knees and putting her hands together in front of Ren as if to beg. "Pleeeease?"

"We may not be done with the hunt…", Ren trailed off, taking a moment to look at Nora, who had the same begging face on, and then at Jaune and Pyrrha, who both shrugged as if to say "works for me", before continuing "sure, we can take this job."

"Alright!", Nora cheered, before beginning to babble about how much she loves Torgue gear as the four walked back to the lodge to take the attached fast travel station to the coordinates given by the broadcast.

….

"Eugh, I can smell the sulfur and gunpowder all the way from here", Weiss commented, her nose wrinkling at the odor as she appeared at the "Badass Crater of Badassitude"'s fast travel station. "Whatever is going on in there it must be a madhouse."

"To be fair, the whole planet is a madhouse", Blake countered. "Not exactly an ideal tourist destination."

"Well at least there's no regulations on mercenary work.", Yang said, trying to look on the bright side.

"There's no regulations at all.", Blake elaborated.

"There's probably worse", Ruby said. "Besides, I think we're either getting another broadcast from that Torgue guy or-"

"OH HEY! IT'S ME AGAIN! IF YOU'RE LISTENING TO THIS YOU'RE IN RANGE OF THE BROADCAST TOWER AT THE CRATER, WHICH MEANS YOU'VE ACCEPTED MY JOB OFFER! GET ON OVER TO A PLACE CALLED THE BEATDOWN AND WE CAN GET TO BUSINESS!" Mister Torgue yelled, again at the top of his lungs, as a new coordinate was marked on everyone's ECHO device.

Soon after Torgue's announcement, another flash of light appeared from the fast travel station and faded to reveal Jaune, Nora, Pyrrha, and Ren.

"Oh hey! I didn't know you four were coming too!", Ruby exclaimed, her hands up to greet the four.

"I guess that means we get to work together again.", Jaune shrugged. "Have you worked with this Torgue guy before?"

"No, but Yang has a ton of Torgue stuff, so nice coincidence for her, I guess", Ruby replied, turning to see Yang and Nora chattering about their shared love of explosions and the corporation that was all about explosions while Weiss and Pyrrha walked off to look for a Catch-A-Ride station.

Soon after Torgue came on to the ECHO again, saying "OH, I THINK I SHOULD MENTION THAT THIS WHOLE AREA IS BANDIT INFESTED AS SH**, SINCE YOU ACCEPTED MY JOB OFFER THAT'S PROBABLY NO BIG DEAL, BUT I'M COVERING MY BASES BECAUSE GETTING SUED F****NG SUCKS! BELIEVE ME I WOULD KNOW!

"How 'bandit infested did he mean-' AAH!", Weiss tried to ask, before ducking under a thrown grenade and watching it explode as she turned to Yang in the driver's seat of the technical. "Get ready to start dodging."

"Alright, hold onto your hats!", Yang exclaimed, before realizing that neither her, nor her passengers brought anything that could even begin to function as a hat. "Er, you know what I mean.", she muttered, before swerving out of the way of another grenade.

"I'M A GAZELLE, OINK!", one of the psychos on the road yelled before his face met the bumper of Yang's car as she was dodging the grenade.

…

"Do they always have to bunch up right outside where I park?", Yang complained, seeing the gaggle of bandits dotted around the derelict inner city area that comprised the beatdown.

"You can park further away, can't you?", Blake asked, confused at Yang's complaint.

"Not my point. Well, good a time as any to try this new thing out", the brawler mused, pulling out the Unkempt Harold and firing a test shot at an oblivious bandit. The bullets fired fanned out into its trademark line, heavily wounding the targeted bandit, but leaving the remaining seven bullets to fly off into the distance.

"Oh, right", Yang realized, forgetting the gun's special feature and drawing the attention of the other bandits, earning perplexed stares from the other three vault hunters. "Don't look at me! Were we seriously going to try to sneak past them?", Yang asked defensively.

"It's no big deal, let me just line these guys up and…", three sharp _cracks_ cut Ruby off, as the three bruisers she happened to have in her sights collapsed on to the ground before a blur of bronze and crimson dropped down before quickly rushing to the side behind a wall to wave at her.

"Pyrrha!", Ruby exclaimed. "Where's the other three?", she asked before catching a sniper in her peripheral vision and firing off a quick shot for suppressing fire while Yang, Blake, and Weiss carried on fighting the mass of irate hooligans, the fight peppered with grunts and cries of nonsense such as "THAT'S MY WAFFLE!", "NOT KNITTING!", or "WAIT IN THE CAR, BRIAN!".

"They're here. Oh by the way, duck!", Pyrrha yelled with her ECHO activated, prompting the vault hunters of team RWBY to seek cover, which cleared way for a handful of grenades to bounce over and blast a chunk of the bandits to smithereens while the sniper Ruby was suppressing fell off his vantage point and received a spray of machine pistol fire for his troubles and one last straggler fell to the distinct _thunk thunk thunk_ of a Jakobs rifle. Once the coast cleared, Ren dropped down from the sniper's perch, Nora came running from behind a building in the distance and Jaune revealed himself from behind a closer building.

"That's one way to make an entrance.", Blake commented.

"You didn't think we'd let you guys have _our_ fill did ya?", Nora asked, her too-wide smile on again.

"This job ought to be easier if we go together, shouldn't it?" Ren asked.

"Uhh, yeah, you're right. I was just thinking we'd get sent to different places or whatever.", Ruby explained, looking at her ECHO for the marked coordinates. "Pyro Pete's Bar?"

"Yep, same thing on mine.", Jaune chimed in. "Let's hope the pay is good."

….

The eight vault hunters entered the bar, taking in the distinct stench of sweat, alcohol, gunpowder, and rotted wood before Mister Torgue screamed into their ECHOs again.

"I GUESS I SHOULD HAVE TOLD YOU IN ADVANCE, BUT I FORGOT TO TELL YOU I'M NOT ACTUALLY AT THE CRATER, I AM CURRENTLY IN ONE OF MY UNREGISTERED SUMMER HOUSES GRILLING UP SOME SICK ASS STEAKS, IDEALLY WITHOUT THE KNOWLEDGE OF INTERPLANETARY AUTHORITIES! JUST LOOK ON THE BOUNTY BOARD TO YOUR LEFT AND THE JOB DESCRIPTION IS ON THERE! ALSO SOME OF THE GUYS AROUND HERE SHOULD HAVE SOME TORGUE TOKENS TO MAKE THE VENDING MACHINES WORK, THAT WILL PROBABLY BE IMPORTANT LATER! BYE!"

"Well he's nothing if not enthusiastic", Blake deadpanned, pulling a crumpled sheet of paper from the bounty board with a childlike scrawl that said "TAK BAK FORGE, CLEER OUT BANDITS, DICK AROUND IN THE BAR, **EXPLOSIONS!"**

"Well what's it say, Blakey?", Yang asks, looking over her shoulder.

"Something about a forge, and to screw around in the bar.", Blake answered, a frown forming at what she assumed (but genuinely hoped was not) to be Mister Torgue's handwriting.

"WHOOPS! RIGHT, THE FORGE! I SHOULD MARK THAT ON YOUR ECHO!", Mister Torgue realized, "GUITAR SOLO! MEEEDLELY SQUBABLYLBOWWW! THERE WE GO, NOW LEMME GET BACK TO THESE AMAZING- AW SH** MY STEAKS BURNED! WELL YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY, SEVENTH TIME'S THE CHARM!", Mister Torgue exclaimed, before he turned off his ECHO.

"Sooo… what?", Jaune asked, confused at the eccentric yelling.

"Our real job is at the Forge, but apparently part of our job is to go to the bar.", Pyrrha replied, equally confused.

"I don't know what you slowpokes are waiting for, we're getting paid to go to a bar!", Nora yelled, kicking the double doors open, only to see a variety of bandits, psychos, and stranded Torgue employees staring back at her, all apparently itching to mash their various melee weapons into something and shoot their various guns.

Weiss, looking at the crowd, and Nora's eager expression, sighed and put the fingers of one hand to her temples.

"Just once I'd like to go a day without wading through bodily fluids.", she muttered to herself, checking Myrtenaster's chambers and scoping out the bar for good places to form a glyph.

Blake said nothing, not that her decoy could say anything as it faded away, the real Blake appearing clinging to the ceiling and watching over Nora.

"Oh good! I was getting bored", Yang boasted. "ENTERTAIN ME!", she yelled, rushing up next to Nora.

"You lead, I watch your back?", Jaune asked Pyrrha, watching as her shield unfolded and she held her rifle to use as a sword.

"Sounds like a plan", she agreed, assuming a defensive stance and joining Yang and Nora.

Ruby, hanging back at the top of the stairwell, unfolded the blade on Crescent Rose.

Get in bar fights and get paid for it? What's not to like?

END OF CHAPTER 17:

A/N: Bonus points for anyone who gets what the psychos are referencing with their yelling (all but one is referencing one thing)


	18. EXPLOSIONS!

Chapter 18: **EXPLOSIONS?!**

"Well, well boys. Looks like we got some fresh meat", one of the bruisers, presumably a leader declared, sizing up seven vault hunters in front of the bar while cracking his knuckles, more to intimidate than for any real need.

"MY YEAST IS RISING!", yelled one of the psychos.

"So you think you're bad enough to-URGH!", the bruiser tried to ask before a sharp pain took him from behind and a dark blur flitted past his vision.

"No monologuing", Blake deadpanned, having snuck from her unseen position on the ceiling and regrouped with Yang and Nora after putting a hole through the burly man's neck.

"Wow, he was the hype guy", one of the bandits lamented, brown bottle in hand.

"Well good thing I was planning to take his spot anyway", the masked hooligan mentioned, flipping the bottle to grab its neck and slamming it against the counter. "LEEET'S GET EEEEEM" he yelled, inciting the others to do the same with their bottles, or pull out an actual weapon.

Turning to one of the less conscious patrons, Yang grabbed a bottle out of his hand and took a swig as the bandits were busy charging into each other on account of their inebriation before spitting it out in disgust and wiping her tongue with her hands in vain.

"Enjoying the local cuisine?", Blake asked, amber irises pointed at Yang and a rare smirk on her face.

"Yeah, we'll call it that.", Yang answered sarcastically, firing one of her wrist mounted shotguns into the air, its explosive pellets smashing into an unfortunate marauder walking out of a until now unseen door. Deeming the shot to be enough provocation, Yang assumed a defensive stance to fight off the incoming onslaught…

...and realized the bandits were all too drunk to notice, the mass of irate Pandorans still busy haphazardly charging into each other only half aware of their real opponents.

"OH COME ON! WHAT ARE YA, CHICKENS?!", Yang yelled, catching the attention of a good number of the drunken ne'er do wells, including the self appointed "hype guy".

"NOBODY CALLS ME CHICKEN! LET'S GET EM FOR REAL!", he yelled, pointing at Yang and her companions and getting the attention of maybe five psychos, the man doing a double take at his utter failure to rally the bar's patrons.

"OH FINE! I DON'T NEED Y'ALL NO HOW! BRING IT ON, I GOT A THREE SHOE BEATING WITH YOUR NAME ON IT!", the "hype guy" yelled, grabbing the Torgue shotgun off his back, which did in fact have three shoes tied onto it, and in a moment of surprising common sense, elected to use his oblivious comrades as cover and keep his distance, focusing on making himself as hard of a target as possible.

"Well what are we waiting for? Torgue is actually paying us to get in a fight! C'mon!" Nora yelled, leading the charge, handle half extended so that she could swing her Torgue made piece of destruction with one hand, knocking out a bruiser who had his back turned.

"Oh crap they really are fighting!", one bandit yelled.

"THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN SAYING!", the new hype guy yelled from somewhere.

Now finally acknowledging the mortal danger of being within forty feet of eight vault hunters, the bandits turned to face them, one of them throwing a Vladof tesla grenade, the capsule crackling to life as the air around it filled with stinging, shield frying electricity, which happens to be exactly what makes Nora _even stronger._

"Hey, leave some for me!", Yang yelled, her new Unkempt Harold pistol in her off hand, primarily for stragglers and the bar goers who wanted to show off their aim and her "Maylay" shield rapidly depleting from the tesla grenade, waiting for it to break and power up her melee attacks to match Nora's strength.

An enforcer, a bigger, thicker, and more top heavy slab of muscle and minimal grey matter than a bruiser blindsided Yang, almost tackling her to the ground, the blonde brawler rolling to allow herself to get in position to retaliate.

From her crouching position the enforcer tried to push down on Yang as if she were a particularly uncooperative jack in the box, but, despite his mass, met strong resistance from Yang. The two were in a deadlock until a stray bullet depleted the last of Yang's shield. Feeling the power afforded by the now broken shield, Yang's face broke out into a smirk as the enforcer's eyes widened, feeling himself losing the pushing contest as Yang violently shoved him out of the grapple as she was standing up from her crouch, wasting not a moment as she gave a buckshot assisted uppercut to his chin.

With her shield broken, Yang lunged forward further into the fray to make use of her boosted strength. Unfortunately, one bandit, cobbled together rocket launcher in hand, walked out from behind the bar just as Yang passed by in her bandit bashing frenzy, giving him a clear shot as she was distracted….

...Just as Nora noticed the rocket launcher and made a move to smash him into the wall (and possibly through it). However, the bandit's finger was already mashing on the trigger of dubious responsiveness and the crude instrument coughed out a small salvo of three rockets, their shaky flight landing them in the room behind the bar where Yang had just rushed into, sending old wood, brown glass, and alcohol of questionable quality into the air, along with a good number of bandits, and Yang, the blonde getting launched into the wall next to the stairwell. With her shield down, the explosion was a much bigger deal, as she found out when she couldn't quite get up.

Most sane men and women would panic and fear for their lives after losing their ability to move in such a chaotic environment. Yang Xiao Long, however, was not most sane women.

"COME ON! I WAS HAVING FUN!", she yelled, grunting in frustration, finding herself unable to punch well enough from the sitting position she couldn't really get out of and forced to resort to her Unkempt Harold. Comedically effective as the special edition pistol may be, Yang would never get the same satisfaction from a pistol as she would a fist, frustrating her to no end.

Thankfully help was not far, as Blake, noticing Yang's frustrated yelling, rolled out of the way out of two bandits she was goading into shooting each other and tried to drop a decoy to get to Yang, only to get that inexplicable feeling that told her the decoy wasn't ready yet. Seeing as everyone else was embroiled in their own part of the bar fight, Blake quickly scrounged through her mind for ideas before she remembered the ribbon attached to Gambol Shroud and the light fixture at the ceiling. Another roll to evade a storm of thrown bottles and a quick gun assisted toss had Gambol Shroud wrapped up on one of the light fixtures above, which Blake used to jump and swing over the pandemonium to Yang, quickly picking her up and setting her down under the stairwell, where surprisingly few, if any fighters had their attention.

"What would I do without you, Blakey?", Yang joked, gritting her teeth as Blake helped her up.

"Be bleeding out next to a stairwell in a really crappy bar", Blake stated unenthusiastically, tightening her grip on Yang's arm as she helped her up at the mention of the pet name the blonde used.

"Hey, I can feel that!", Yang complained. "I've got more than enough things that are trying to kill me, I don't need _another_ hot chick after me-didIjustsaythatoutloud?!", Yang exclaimed at herself, only now realizing her mouth had been moving faster than her brain, and that Blake heard her.

Judging from the expression on her face, Blake was caught off guard by Yang's remark just as much as Yang herself while trying to piece together an adequate response. "I… uh… thank you?", Blake finally stammered, before shaking her head and grabbing Yang's hand to pull her up, prompting the blonde to sarcastically mention that she hasn't even taken her to dinner yet before fully getting back on her feet.

"Alright, ready for round… uh..", Yang trailed off, seeing a bar's worth of dead or unconscious bodies strewn about the bar. "I missed something didn't I?".

"Well yeah, after the fifth fat guy went down everyone who wasn't down ran for the hills!", Ruby complained, throwing her hands up and looking to the ceiling in frustration and sighing.

"Oh hey, there's still some drinks here!" Jaune pointed out, walking over to a bunch of unopened bottles.

Yang staggered in to see the seven just about to tip the bottles over, prompting her stagger to turn into a run as she yelled "WAIT DON'T-", which was cut off by the combined violent spitting of exhausted, thirsty vault hunters, all of them making various noises of disgust except for Nora and Jaune, who were still enthusiastically guzzling the booze.

"What.. how?", Weiss asked, looking at Jaune and Nora in bewilderment.

"This is nothing! It's nowhere _near_ the strength worthy of a Valkyrie! I DEMAND MORE!" Nora shouted, oblivious to how amazed her friends were that she not only downed a whole bottle, but _wanted more_.

"This isn't too bad. One of my sisters tried brewing. She wasn't good at it. Like, at all.", Jaune explained, finishing it off with a nonchalant swig.

"That was worse than Uncle Qrow's flask…", Ruby commented, looking for literally anything else to put in her mouth to wash out the foul beverage.

"Wait Qrow let you…", Yang tried to say.

"It was an accident and just one sip!" Ruby exclaimed.

"Okay, you were almost in a lot of trouble there, sis. Now c'mere for your "big sister didn't die yet noogie", Yang commented, pulling Ruby in.

"YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANG!"

…...

"WOW, I DON'T KNOW WHY I LET THIS BAR KEEP RUNNING CONSIDERING HOW I SPECIFICALLY MENTIONED THAT ALCOHOL DESTROYS FAMILIES BUT HOLY S*** YOU GUYS ARE GOOD", Mister Torgue said.

"Yeah, fun as that was…", Weiss commented, "was there a reward for this part?".

"YOU BET YOUR NOT EXPLODING ASS! CHECK THE BOUNTY BOARD AGAIN, I BET YOU'RE GONNA LIKE IT!", Torgue answered through the ECHO.

Following Torgue's instruction, the eight vault hunters accessed the console on the bounty board and were rewarded with nondescript burgundy coins, nowhere near resembling any form of accepted currency that the eight knew of.

"We didn't just kill a bar's worth of people for arcade tokens, did we?", Blake deadpanned, frowning at her handful of the unknown coins.

"OF COURSE NOT! THOSE ARE TORGUE TOKENS! THE ONLY FORM OF CURRENCY EXPLOSIVELY WORTHY OF BEING USED IN MY VENDING MACHINES! USE EM TO BUY BASIC SUPPLIES AND EXPLOSIONS AND ALL THAT SH**. OH, AND DISCLAIMER: **THE COOKIES IN THE MACHINES ARE OATMEAL RAISIN**! SOMEONE GOT REAL MAD ABOUT NOT KNOWING THAT BEFOREHAND! TOODLES!", Torgue explained, before presumably going back to trying to grill steaks.

"Oatmeal…. Raisin….", Ruby trailed off, her eye twitching.

"Ruby… are you okay?", Yang asked, waving a hand in front of Ruby.

"No, but I guess raisin will have to do", she pouted, walking over to the vending machine, feeding it a token and sitting on the ruined couch nearby to munch forlornly at what she considered an insult to baked goods everywhere.

"So who's up for the forge?", Jaune asked, looking at the other vault hunters.

"After lunch", came the unanimous reply, everyone moving to the vending machine.

….

After scarfing down enough cheap vending machine food to feed a rabid skag, the eight vault hunters got up from their seats on the floor or the couch to leave the bar when all their ECHOs received a notification.

"Hey there sugars…", a sultry voice greeted.

"Is that who I think it is?", Blake asked no one in particular.

"I can hear you, and if you're thinking Mad Moxxi.. well you're right, doll.", the voice, now known to be Moxxi answered. "Care to tell where you know me from?"

"Eh heh heh, uh.. No not really.", Blake stammered, a blush coloring her usually pale face.

"Oh I'm sure I can get you off of your whole secrecy shtick some time later but for now… I have some business for you all, seeing how active you all are. Word travels fast, you know.", Moxxi commented.

"Another job? What is it?" Pyrrha asked, breaking the brief silence.

"I want Torgue's crater. I want the whole hole for myself.", Moxxi declared.

END OF CHAPTER 18

A/N: What food goes in an explosive weapon manufacturers vending machine? Hell if I know!

DISCLAIMER: Ruby's opinions on oatmeal raisin cookies do not reflect that of the author's


	19. Conflict of Interest

CHAPTER 19: Conflict of Interest

"Oh great", Weiss muttered, her experience with the corporate world before she had run away making her all too familiar with the situation that had just arisen. "Let me guess, you want us to off Torgue too?", she asked. Considering the planet she was on right now, she thought that was a fair question.

"Wait what? No, I don't even know where he is! Is a gal wanting huge tracts of land really that suspicious?", Moxxi shot back, pretending to sound hurt.

"OH GOOD! FOR A MOMENT THERE I THOUGHT SOMEONE BESIDES THE SPACE COPS WOULD BE AFTER ME!", Torgue bellowed out of nowhere

"Torgue what the hell?! Have you been listening this whole time?", Moxxi asked, surprise obvious in her voice.

"YEP! THOSE VAULT HUNTERS YOU'RE TALKING TO ARE REALLY BAD ABOUT ECHO SECURITY! NOW THAT I KNOW YOU'RE LISTENING VAULT HUNTERS, I WILL PAY YOU TWICE THE MONEY I WAS ORIGINALLY GONNA PAY YOU IF YOU GET _ME_ THE CRATER INSTEAD OF MOXXI!", Torgue offered.

"Oh don't mind that meathead, now. Any money Torgue will actually offer I can top, easy.", Moxxi countered.

"CAN YOU NOW?! WELL I GUESS I'M JUST GONNA HAVE TO OFFER SOMETHING WORTH **MORE** THAN MONEY THAT ALSO CANNOT ALSO BE OFFERED BY MOXXI! HOW ABOUT… A GUN?!", yelled Torgue.

"You mean the things that we have lots of and have found lots of before and while working for you?", Ren deadpanned.

"Yeah I don't know what he's on about, I can get you plenty of toys. Weapons or otherwise", Moxxi said devilishly.

"Uh yeah about that I don't really think….", Yang trailed off, seeing Blake's blush get even worse than when Moxxi first asked her where she knew her from.

"HEY I WASN'T FINISHED! I'M NOT JUST OFFERING "A" GUN. I AM OFFERING MOTHERF****** SPECIAL EDITION TORGUE S***THAT HAS NEVER BEFORE BEEN RELEASED!

"Never released because it sucks or because…?", Blake asked warily.

"OF COURSE NOT! I WOULDN'T BE F****** OFFERING IT TO YOU OTHERWISE! THEY ARE STATE OF THE ART PROTOTYPE TECH DEMOS THAT WE HAD TO RETIRE **BECAUSE THEY WERE TOO F****** COSTLY!** SO IF YOU ASK ME, THEY'RE PRETTY DAMN GOOD!"

"Is Torgue stuff _all_ you have? Not all of us have drank the testosterone gunpowder koolaid", Weiss remarked, earning mock offended stares from Yang and Nora before they ended up chuckling at Weiss's comment.

"OH FINE! I ACTUALLY MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE AN ARMORY'S WORTH OF LOOT FROM OTHER MERCS SOMEWHERE IN THE CRATER, AND ONLY _I_ CAN TELL YOU WHERE THE F*** IT IS! THERE, HAPPY?!", Torgue yelled.

"That is a solid offer, but I like keeping my options open…", Weiss trailed off, a devious smirk forming as she was coaxing more and more payout for what should have just been a side job.

"Oh please, I can get you something worth a lot more than some new trinkets, sugars. How about some gear from my.., _personal_ collection, free drinks any time you all swing by Sanctuary, and you'll get one favor out of me or any of my contacts, how's that sound?", Moxxi offered.

"Uh.. how about we actually do the job and we get back to you on that? Wait, how are we even supposed to turn over ownership to one of you? Is there actually a deed here or something?", Weiss asked, realizing the currently unresolved logistics of the choice of who to "give" the crater to.

"Oh, right. Ugh I completely forgot about that, Torgue probably has a deed and I can't get that out of him… never mind I guess it's…. Wait…. That's it! Torgue company policy "409" says any piece of Torgue property may be legally acquired by a sanctioned trial by combat with Mister Torgue or an adequate representative. Vault hunters! Just beat whatever lackey Torgue throws at you when you're done clearing out the crater and those guns, drinks and favor are as good as yours!", Moxxi exclaimed.

"TRIAL BY COMBAT?! THAT IS A GREAT POLICY! BUT I'M ON THE LAM, SO I CAN'T BE THERE! I DO NOT SANCTION THIS TRIAL BY COMBAT I ASSUME YOU WILL WANT TO INITIATE!", Torgue shouted, well aware of how little he stood to gain from adhering to the policy.

"Really now? Is little Mister Torgue _scared_?", Moxxi teased, hoping to get a rise out of him.

"FEAR IS NOT A WORD IN MY F****** VOCABULARY, MOXXI!", Torgue countered, his yelling about the same as usual and indicating no real reaction. "YOU GET ME AN OFF THE GRID TRANSPORT TO THE CRATER AND I WILL FIGHT THE S*** OUT OF THOSE VAULT HUNTERS FOR MY DEED."

"Oh I knew you'd come around you big lug. Just let me call in a favor and your escort will be on its way.", Moxxi said, a smile evident in her voice at how easily Torgue had been played.

"Uh.. we need to actually clear the crater first..", Blake commented.

"NO BIGGIE!" Torgue exclaimed.

"Alright, well that's that for now. Talk to you later, sugars.", Moxxi finished, somehow making it understood through audio alone that she had winked at all eight of them as she said goodbye.

"Ok really, where _do_ you know Mox-MMPH!", Yang tried to ask, before Blake shoved her hand over her mouth and laughed nervously,

"Ah heh, oh that's not important. We were supposed to clear out the forge right? The.. uh.. Yeah! Forge! Let's go _right now_ ", Blake suggested, demonstrating surprising strength as she pulled Yang by her scarf with one arm while the other was busy being clamped over the blonde's mouth.

"Did that just happen?", Jaune, who had spaced out for a little, asked.

"I guess… I've actually never seen Blake act like that", Ruby trailed off, confused at Blake's hasty demeanor.

Off in the distance, a psycho's voice grew louder, proclaiming that "The sound of a babbling brook makes me want to babble!", followed by the common manic laughter, but also that of at least a handful of other psychos.

"I think that's our cue.", Ren suggested, already in the process of hopping a fence to get back to wherever he parked his runner.

"Alright then, let's go everyo-wait where'd Blake and Yang go?!", Ruby exclaimed, noticing a distinct lack of unruly blonde hair and the presence of the taciturn ex Lance agent.

"Right about over there.", Weiss answered, pointing off in the direction Yang had parked the technical, leading Ruby to see her sister was _still_ being dragged by Blake.

"I'm still confused.", Ruby commented.

"...I ship it!", Nora declared, earning the confused stares of everyone else.

"...What?!"

…

"I'm just going to pretend nothing happened. Does that sound good?", Weiss asked, now behind the wheel to let Yang, who had taken a much worse beating than usual, rest.

"Sure.", Blake replied quickly, having mostly gotten over her skittishness.

"Pretend what didn't happen?", Yang Ruby asked, genuinely confused.

"There we go, that's my lil' sis", Yang replied, unable to see Ruby wasn't just playing along from her spot passenger seat as Ruby chose to sit in the truck bed.

…

"So what did that job on the bounty board say again?", Jaune asked, driving one of the two seat runners with Pyrrha in the gunner seat fiddling with Jaune's now defunct ECHO device.

"Some skag problem it says, a big fire skag that got loose at the road outside the crater bar.", Pyrrha answered, reading off the log in her own ECHO while trying to revive Jaune's.

"Just one skag? It can't be that bad, can it?", Jaune inquired, seeing the runner with Ren and Nora zip past to road that was marked as the path to the forge.

"I guess not, we can go kill it and be back in about five minutes", Pyrrha surmised.

….

"Uhh, how many minutes has it been, Pyrrha?", Jaune asked, trying to distract himself from how many times he had been within a hair's breadth of a protracted, painful, and fiery death ever since he got out of the car to deal with this mysterious flaming skag as he dashed behind a rock that was currently getting pelted with said skag's incendiary body fluids.

"About… ten minutes", Pyrrha answered, throwing a grenade behind the rock she was hiding behind to soften up the beast.

"Hmmm.. Is that shield fireproof?", Jaune wondered aloud, pointing at Pyrrha's circular shield, trying to piece together a plan.

"Not really, but it'll hold for a few seconds.", the redhead replied.

"Okay, draw its fire and i'll hit it while it's trying to get you.", Jaune ordered.

"Right,", Pyrrha nodded, rolling out from behind her rock in a defensive stance, her rifle held behind her to protect it from the incoming heat.

The skag, which, much like all Pandoran wildlife operated on the mentality of "kill first, ask questions never" wasted no time in spewing a stream of fire from its mouth, which, likely from whatever it was spewing that _actually_ caught on fire, was strong enough to slowly push Pyrrha back. What the skag failed to notice, however, was a certain scraggly blonde moving out from behind cover and behind Pyrrha. Just as the Pyrrha's shields (both the physical one and the projected energy one from the device of the same name) were about to fail, Jaune yelled "Duck!", prompting Pyrrha to dodge out of the path of the skag's flame attack, its mouth still wide open and exposing its vital organs as Jaune lined up a few easy shots that went right into its mouth, staggering it and forcing it to stop its flame attack.

Seizing the brief window she had, Pyrrha threw one of her grenades right into the skag's still open mouth as it was busy recoiling from getting shot by Jaune. With nowhere to go, the explosive force of the grenade sent the skag flying…

…..in pieces

…..right into Jaune and Pyrrha.

"Oh GROSS!", Jaune yelled, trying in vain to wipe his face with his hands, which were just as splattered with skag bits as the rest of him.

"Ahh heh, sorry", said sheepishly, having been splattered by the explosion just as badly as Jaune had.

"Ah it's fine, it's just… blurgh this is gonna take a while to come off", Jaune commented, just as Pyrrha's ECHO crackled to life with Nora's voice.

"Where are you two slowpokes?! We have places to go and people to kill! We've been waiting outside the forge entrance for you all forever!", Nora exclaimed.

"Don't worry, it's only been fifteen minutes", Ren interjected. "Regardless, we _have_ been waiting on you.", he added.

"Right, don't worry we're on the way", Jaune answered.

"Let's hope the pay for that job covers a change of clothes", Jaune commented, still reeking of gunpowder and skag guts.

Pyrrha did not respond, save for a playful smirk as she returned to the gunner seat and went back to prodding at Jaune's ECHO device.

…...

…."I swear we keep visiting bigger and bigger dumps". Weiss deadpanned, having entered the forge and having recognized, among many things, the smell. It was even worse than the smell that was in the regular crater, the usual sulfur and gunpowder going from a subtle sting to and acrid assault on her nose combined with old motor oil and general burnt garbage.

"Well you know what they say, princess. One man's trash ship is another man's treasure.", Yang joked.

"Yang I think the saying is just 'trash'", Ruby said, also gazing at the stark contrast the smoke clouds in the forge were to the usual open bright sky of the crater.

"HEYYYY. GUESS WHO!", Torgue yelled, but not from an ECHO.

"Wait Torgue's already here?!", Ruby exclaimed.

"I AM READY FOR THE TRIAL BY COMBA-WOAH HEY YOU YOU AIN'T PART OF THIS GET THE F*** OUTTA MY WAY! OH THAT'S HOW YOU WANNA PLAY, HUH? WELL YOU AIN'T PLAYING FOR LONG MOTHERF*****". Torgue yelled, some electronic noises indicating he was using something like a megaphone followed by the distinct sounds of bones cracking and the usual scream a person makes after having their bones cracked like twigs.

"NO ONE HAS MANNERS TODAY, I SWEAR", Torgue yelled. "OKAY, APPARENTLY THESE SKAGSUCKS WANT IN ON THIS TRIAL BY COMBAT TOO, VAULT HUNTERS, BUT THEY AINT PART OF THIS. SO HOW 'BOUT WE **BOTH** KILL EM AND _THEN_ WE CAN DO THE TRIAL BY COMBAT THING?!" Torgue offered.

"Wait we haven't even decided on whether we're even doing that!", Weiss exclaimed through the ECHO.

"OH, RIGHT. WELL I'M ALREADY HERE SO I'M GONNA BE KILLING BANDITS ON THIS SIDE OF THE FORGE. WHO'S KEEPING SCORE?!, Torgue shouted.

"No one, but still it's on!", Yang exclaimed.

END OF CHAPTER 19


	20. Fire and Brimstone

Chapter 20: Fire and Brimstone

The sharp cracks and clangs of gunfire and metal striking metal dominated the forge along with the ever present buckling of scrap piles and gurgling of man made magma as four vault hunters and one explosive obsessed muscleman powered their way through the inhabitants and security systems of the forge. Bandits, Torgue loader robots, and self proclaimed badasses fell like wheat to a sickle as both parties advanced to their arranged "trial by combat" as proposed by Moxxi and hastily agreed upon by Torgue. In the distance, however, the bloody sparking swath the vault hunters were cutting came to a screeching halt thanks to a rain of rockets from above.

"WE GOT US SOME INTRUDERS THAT NEED SOME JUSTICE RAINED ON EM! RIIIIDE OUT, BOYS!", a bandit called out over a megaphone, prompting a swarm of buzzard aircraft to appear out of the woodwork to accompany the lead buzzard that launched the first set of rockets that halted the vault hunters.

"That's…." Blake trailed off.

"Not good.", Yang finished, thinking quickly and diving for cover from the inevitable rain of munitions while the team's plan devolved into "every woman for herself", with all four of them using evasive maneuvers to evacuate the soon to be killzone courtesy of the mass of armed aircraft looking down on them.

As expected, the buzzards opened fire, machine guns and rockets filling the air and kicking up the dirt similar to how water splashes when dynamite is thrown in.

"We need a plan", Blake commented, doing a double take at how much firepower was unloaded on where she and her friends- wait, friends? When did she start calling them friends? She could mull on that later, the current concern was the massive swarm of buzzards and their guns that were fully capable of rendering all four of them into a red splotch on the ground.

"I can get a bead on them if I have cover", Ruby suggested, peeking her head out from behind a scrap pile for about a fraction of a second before she had to dart behind it again to avoid the spray of bullets aimed at her.

Thinking quickly, Blake threw out a decoy and fired a few shots to get the attention of the buzzards, hoping Ruby would pick up on the gesture. For a few moments, nothing happened as the buzzards turned to the decoy, but just as they opened fire, smoke and fire erupted out of one of the buzzard's cockpits, sending it spinning out of control and into another one.

"Two down…. A lot to go.", Ruby commented, pushing the bolt of her rifle back in place to chamber another round.

"Well great, I guess I just get to sit and wait while-", Yang grumbled, before another of the buzzards started spinning out of control, but not out of nowhere like a shot from Ruby would have looked like.

Instead, a mass of muscle and excessive machismo was seen wildly pounding his fists on the cockpit before somehow jumping onto the landing struts of another buzzard and swinging himself up feet first into the second buzzard's cockpit, the pilot flew out not a moment before the man flew out the other side, grabbing onto the other side of landing struts as the buzzard was rapidly losing altitude.

" **MEEDLYSWABBABOWWEEEEEEOW** ", the man, who the greatly confused vault hunters identified as Mister Torgue yelled. " **MOUTH GUITAR SOLO MOTHERF*****S**!"

"Is he….?", Weiss trailed off, watching in morbid fascination as Torgue leapt between and smashed an entire fleet of buzzards with agility that would never be expected of a man his stature, and with his bare hands no less.

"He is…", Blake answered, just as shocked as Weiss.

"Well I'm not letting him have all the fun! Boost me up Weiss!", Yang exclaimed.

"Fine..", Weiss grumbled, projecting the glyph under Yang to launch her up at the buzzards with their current predicament combined with the surprise of Yang leaping up at them keeping her from getting shot.

The rate at which the buzzards dropped began to soar as Torgue and Yang played an even more dangerous version of demolition derby with them

It only took a short while before all the buzzards in the sky were violently brought to the ground, Yang breaking her fall from one with hands while the last one was being rode by Torgue like a wild skag as it crash landed.

" **WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! EXPLOOOOSIOOOONS!** ", Torgue bellowed, pumping his fists in the air. "NOW HOW 'BOUT THAT TRIAL BY COMBAT?! HEY WAIT THIS DOESN'T SEEM FAIR!", Torgue commented, only now realizing (or perhaps only now bothering to acknowledge) that he had barreled into a four-on-one fight for his corporation.

"You're not backing out though, are you?", Yang asked, disappointment creeping into her voice. Besides that sniper at Vaughn's base (who she didn't even actually get to hit) she considered most of the recipients of the Xiao Long family special knuckle sandwich to be cannon fodder. Sure she couldn't exactly punch and shoot her way through all of Pandora, but no one has lasted longer than a single shotgun punch.

"WHAT MADE YOU THINK THAT?!", Torgue yelled. "I'VE GOT THIS, JUST A SEC". Orange light gathered around devices on Torgue's belt that could now be clearly recognized as digistruct modules, storage devices carried by any self respecting treasure hunter. The light began to take shape, quickly solidifying into two quadruple barreled "purple" grade Torgue Ravager shotguns, the top selling of the standard Torgue product line.

"ALRIGHT, _NOW_ IT'S FAIR!", Torgue declared. "ROUND 1: **FIGHT!** ", he yelled, stomping forward and firing all eight barrels, unleashing a mass of explosive pellets. Slow as they may be compared to regular bullets, the explosive Torgue munitions managed to clip each of the four vault hunters.

Yang, subscribing to the old saying of "if it ain't broke, dont fix it", charged forward, zig-zagging through Torgue's volatile volleys as her three friends kept Torgue's attention with some covering fire in an attempt to catch him off guard. Surely with two heavy guns meant to be carried in two hands Torgue would be easy to outmaneuver in a melee.

Movement wouldn't be all Yang would need to take down the massive man though, as she found out as soon as her signature shotgun punch did little more than make Torgue stop firing to look down at his chest the same way he would have looked if someone simply flicked it.

"OH!", Torgue exclaimed, his surprise seemingly genuine. "THIS DOESN'T USUALLY HAPPEN!", he yelled, before heaving his arms, shotguns in hand, up over his head to try smash Yang into the ground.

Much like how a cartoon character would try to sidestep the ominous shadow of a falling heavy object, Yang's intuition told her this was not a hit she could take in stride, forcing her to cut off her punch mid way through the motion, disrupting her rhythm and making it so that she just barely didn't clear Torgue's ground slam.

An eruption of soot and scrap accompanied Torgue's attack, leaving no sign of Yang when it cleared besides a single shotgun shell.

Yang Xiao Long has lived through many days, some have been good days, some…. Not so good.

Today would definitely fall under the category of "not so good day"

Her right arm burned in pain, when she tried to bring it up it wouldn't respond.

"Yang?!", Ruby called out, seeing Yang struggle with her arm from afar.

"OH SH**, THIS TRIAL WAS SUPPOSED TO BE NON LETHAL. THAT WAS THE ONE THING THE BOARD MADE ME PUT IN. F****** KILLJOYS!" Torgue exclaimed. "I GUESS THIS IS FINE, ONE DOWN. THREE TO -AUUGH!", Torgue commented before getting the wind knocked out of him and getting knocked on his rear.

In front of him stood Yang, her right arm limp but the rest of her seemingly ablaze, her roid shield sparking from the stress caused by Torgue's attack, eyes burning red, and an audacious grin with gritted teeth on her face

"YOU THINK I'M DONE?!", she yelled. "I'VE GOT 5 MORE FINGERS TO BEAT YOUR ASS WI-", she boasted, before she noticed something wrapping around her leg. "Wait wha~!", she exclaimed, before being Yanked by what she now recognized as Gambol Shroud's ribbon right up below Blake, who was staring with an annoyed look on her face.

"What?! I was just about to knock him out!", Yang protested, gesturing wildly with her good arm.

"Your arm is broken. I don't care, you're out til we can fix your arm", Blake declared assertively.

Yang sensed the conviction in Blake's voice, but she couldn't stand just sitting around as everyone else got to shoot at the face of her favorite weapons company. "Can I at least take potshots?".

"As well as you can with a sawn off shotgun, sure", Blake deadpanned.

"NOT TRYING TO INTERRUPT, BUT ARE YOU TWO F***** DONE YET?!", Torgue interrupted, noticing a distinct lack of bullets or fists flying at him as Weiss and Ruby had taken to watching Yang and Blake.

"Oh, right", Ruby realized, squeezing off a shot at Torgue's left hand, causing him to drop the shotgun.

" **OW!"** , Torgue yelled, inspecting his hand for any damage before Weiss used a glypth to propel herself to Torgue's side to take a quick shot at his other hand, prompting him to drop the other shotgun.

"OH THAT'S FINE! **AND I AM NOT BEING SARCASTIC!** ", Torgue bellowed, cracking his knuckles.

"NOW IT GETS REAL! GUITAR SOLO!", he yelled, belting out gibberish meant to resemble an electric guitar.

Ruby, guessing she would need to reposition, dashed off to the side just as Torgue charged forward, crashing through junk unimpeded.

"Uh Weiss, ice!" Ruby exclaimed.

"Got it!", Weiss replied, throwing down one of her grenades, which began to spew the liquid coolant characteristic of a cryo grenade.

"OH YOU DON'T GET TO RUN!", Torgue shouted, trying to run down the three significantly more mobile vault hunters as the ice field grew stronger.

Over time the ice began to erode at Torgue's speed. What once were bulrushes became impeded slogs, allowing the vault hunters to whittle him down, always out of his reach.

At some point after the pattern was established Torgue fell face first into the ground with a thud, his arm slapping the ground to indicate surrender.

"OK, YOU WIN!", Torgue conceded, his yelling muffled by the ground which his face was currently laying on. "YOU CAN GIVE THE DEED OF THIS AREA TO MOXXI, JUST KNOW THAT YOU'RE DEPRIVING A MAN OF HIS LIVELIHOOD, DREAM JOB AND ONE PASSION IN LIFE! **NOT TO MAKE YOU FEEL GUILTY OR ANYTHING, BUT YOU OUGHTA CONSIDER IT!** ", he explained, his face still in the dirt but also betraying his desperation.

"Right….", Weiss trailed off. "We'll consider that when the forge is clear.

"Uh, hello!", Yang exclaimed waving around her broken arm with her good one. "Anyone got an insta health! This thing is still floppy!"

"YEAH JUST A SEC! NO HARD FEELINGS RIGHT?!", Torgue replied, the distinct red vial and needle materializing out of his digistruct device.

"Eh, I've gotten myself into worse. Guess I'll find a sling later", Yang commented, jabbing the needle into her arm. It didn't reset her arm, but it at least stopped the bleeding. "That was a great fight Torgue! Even if it didn't last too long.", she complemented, offering her good hand to shake.

"YEAH IT WAS FUN AS F***", Torgue agreed, shaking Yang's hand a little too hard, prompting her to rub it against her side.

"And we're going to have to talk over some things real quick", she noted, calling her three friends into a huddle and bringing down her voice.

"Ok seriously who do we give this to when we're done? They're both offering a lot", Yang asked.

"I'd say Moxxi. One favor of any kind with her connections, or at least the one's I've heard of is no small reward.", said Weiss.

"I dunno, Torgue has a lot to lose from this", Ruby countered. "What's he gonna do if he doesn't have this? It's not like he isn't offering anything either. I say we give it to Torgue".

"I say give it to Torgue but I'm sure we all knew that", Yang commented, turning to Blake. "You're the swing vote, Blakey. What do you say?"

"Ignoring that nickname…", Blake began, earning a look of exaggerated offense from Yang. "I think we should give it to Torgue, his special weapons could be particularly useful or valuable.", she concluded.

"Hm, I think you're all wasting an opportunity, but majority rule…", Weiss trailed off, deflating a little.

"Hey Torgue? We decided that we'll give the deed to all this to you when we're done", Yang declared, prompting an elated yell from the giant man.

"WOOOOOO! I WON'T BE HOMELESS FOR AT LEAST 20 MORE YEARS! IN YOUR FACE, MOXXI!", he hollered.

While Torgue was celebrating, the ECHOs of the vault hunters blinked to life with a message from Rhys.

"Uh, yeah, so as it turns out. We're not the only ones looking for the vault…"

 _Meanwhile, in another part of the forge._

"I think that's all of them, let's move up to the-", Jaune suggested before being cut off by Rhys's message

END OF CHAPTER 20

A/N: Ah crap. It's been way too long without a notice or explanation for why I've gone missing like Raven going out for cigs, and I'm sorry. I guess now is good a time as any. School is picking up along with college application and between all of that I don't find myself with the energy to write this as often as I used to. So for now I'm wrapping up this subplot and leaving the main plot open for me to come back to whenever. I don't know when a new chapter will be out, but this just isnt awfully high on my priority list.

Until next time, (whenever that is) ~Vests


End file.
